


What You Fucking Deserve

by Mama_Nihil



Series: Diamonds and Curls [1]
Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Angst, Anything is possible, Arkham Asylum, Character Study, F/M, Marriage of True Minds, Mind Games, Power Play, Sooner or Later, Soulmates, alright things escalated quickly and I'm upgrading to explicit, because she deserves one too, but it's not a simple Stockholm syndrome romance, i don't know yet, i mean probably, if purple prose can ever be regarded as explicit, ish, it might turn out to be a romance, mostly a chamber drama, my Quinn relates to canon Quinn like Joaquin relates to canon Joker, not much running on rooftops if you get my drift, of sorts, or Both, or a partnership, or nothing at all, she just wants to talk to him okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2020-12-28 07:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21132743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mama_Nihil/pseuds/Mama_Nihil
Summary: Arthur is safe in his cage, and Harleen is reckless enough to step into it. She has no illusions, no desire to help, just a cat-killing curiosity. Her researcher's mind can't leave him alone. He's the sore in her mouth. He's the itch in her soul. He's the mirror image of her painted-on conformity.And it's starting to crack.Spotify list, perfect to dance to ;)





	1. White room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines  
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves
> 
> ([Cream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR90gQ-SIaY))

“So you’re going for the tragic childhood dollar.”

A bold, leading question, designed to provoke. To pierce the mask that was no longer painted on. She tapped her pen on the notepad, _tap tap tap tap_ like a heart, or a double bass stress beat. An invitation to dance. His eyes were drawn to it, like she'd intended. The pen had been a conscious choice in this age of portable tape recorders. She wanted that look he was giving it: hungry, intent, distracted. Like he was battling an urge to stab her.

She stopped tapping, and his eyes flicked up to hers. “You’re the expert,” he purred. “You tell me.”

That voice. So calculated. Or was it? Such a perfect imitation of humanity in ruin. A designed vocality, like the white noise an old boyfriend had created as part of his diploma in composition at the music academy, because that was a totally sane thing to do with your time.

Oh well. It was all relative, wasn’t it?

She smiled down at her notepad. It was scribbled full of important-looking perversions – her very own warped joke journal. “_Actually_, my dissertation was about the subway surveillance system as a failed panopticon.”

As expected, he said nothing to that, just gave her an appraising look. She was running barefoot through the minefield now, enacting the very persona he must hate. Not meeting his gaze right now was as intentional as everything else about this meeting, from her rehearsed words to the way her hair was gathered in an untidy bun smack bang between girly and bohemian intellectual.

After a few seconds that she counted religiously, she looked up. His eyes were narrowed, wary. The perfect combination of dangerous and vulnerable. A wounded bird turned pterodactyl because of Society, because of Mother. The oldest in the book, and no less eyeroll-worthy for being possibly true. She knew he was a consummate performer and a failed one, a hypnotist without an audience, but she also knew – or thought she knew – that his act would never work without a kernel of truth.

“In fact, the final article in my dissertation treated on how the cameras didn't catch–” She stopped, unease materializing like a third person in the room – fourth, if you counted the guard. She shouldn’t be talking about this, not with him. _Don’t give him morsels to assemble a weapon_. And yet she would have to trade something. For all his supposedly deprived background, he was no fool. Not educated, not even in here, they couldn’t give him anything paper because God knew what he’d do with it, but he knew things anyway. Knew them like she did, without even trying, because observation was second nature. Because he was no stranger to the darkest of logics.

Before she could either resume or retract, he nodded. “Subway surveillance. I see. You wrote about me? Watched the footage again and again, trying to… _get it_? Well, I’m flattered. What a nice job you must have, writing about reality as the rest of us live it.”

There it was. But she was prepared. She caught the barb in a mental ninja move, crushed it in her fist. She wanted to say that the subway wouldn’t even be there for him to kill in without people like her who thought it into existence, but she mustn’t engage in mind games.

Assuming that was his thing.

“Yes, that’s what I do,” she said with contrived cheerfulness.

“I’ll tell you what the subway is,” he said, taking a drag from his somewhat unexpected cigarette (because if he wasn’t allowed paper, how the hell was he allowed a spark of actual fire?). “It’s an iron cage, forcing you to go where someone else wants you to go. It’s the underground path of destiny, a life laid out before you, and nothing at the end of the tunnel. It’s societal structure, weaponized.”

For a second she felt lightheaded, like the moment before an epiphany. His fish bait eyes hooked her, reeled her in. Lips parted, she tried to speak, but there was nothing she could say. She mustn’t stroke his ego with her breathless concession that yes, damn it, the subway was a physically manifest discourse, the hand of power directing human movement in the guise of self-regulation, so taken for granted no one thought to question it. Why criticize the thing that took you where you (thought you) wanted to go? Why bite the hand?

Because you’d never signed up for the array of stations the transportation smorgasbord offered. When the PA crackled “Next stop Arkham Road” and you gathered your things and got off, it wasn’t because you’d ever planned to go there. It was just a kneejerk reaction to sliding doors.

His eyes glowed a fluorescent viridescent. “Yes, I’m going for the tragic childhood dollar,” he said softly. “It’s all there, why not step into the shoes that fit? You did too.”

Her toes twitched inside winter boots. She’d just made the change from autumn shoes and had sores on her soles. “Why step into any shoes at all?” she muttered. “Aren’t you a captain of chaos?” The alliteration came naturally, folding her into his conversation like a wave because it was just so damn easy. “Why slip into something so… _predictable_?”

“Because my other shoes were too fucking hard to run in.”

She smothered a sudden laugh. “Mm,” she acquiesced through pursed lips.

He shifted, and the room seemed to brighten somewhat. “Oh, so that was an answer you liked.”

She took a moment to breathe. She had just laughed at his joke – or at him? Who could tell? He was so flippant, but that too was at least partly pretense. It was what made this interview such a tightrope. The most banal detail or the juiciest shocker – they could be anything from a calculated sob story to the most deeply felt truth. Maybe both.

He sighed. “So what are you after, Doctor Quinzel? A neat bow to tie around your next study? Why are you here?”

A twinge of irritation made her careless. “To separate the lies from… whatever else there is.”

He nodded. “A case. Something to kickstart your career.”

“I have a career.”

Fuck. It came out too bitter. Did he notice? She gave him a surreptitious look. It was so hard to tell, even for her. He was guileless like a child and wily like a snake, and she didn’t know which face, if any, was an act. She’d watched the clips from the show a hundred times, trying to decide if the gun hand belonged to Arthur or someone else, but the versions of him were too meshed. There was no clean break where the clueless man-baby stopped and the Joker began. His was an identity so complex, attempting to analyze it was like removing surgical stitches that had melted into flesh and become part of the wound.

His eyes gleamed – Hitchcock eyes, performing tricks like Vertigo – and she didn’t know if she was drawn in or pushed away.

Time to change tacks. “You say people don’t ‘get it’.”

His cigarette had burned down to his fingers, but like a cookie cutter Bond psycho he didn’t react. It was starting to disintegrate into ashes all over his skin. “Well, they don’t,” he murmured.

She waited. He would take this bait.

He smiled suddenly. “You think you’re the one who’s going to get it?”

The double meaning wasn’t lost on her. Clever bastard. Too clever for someone with his backstory. A child prodigy whose arrested development was the only stumbling block to genius? A brain that would have conquered academia if not for all that malnourishment, all that maltreatment? Malicious, maladapted malcontent.

Her muscles tensed to fight down what would have been a visible shiver. “How am I going to ‘get it’?” She glanced down at his shackles. Wrists, ankles. “You’re captivat…ed.”

The narrowly avoided '-ing' rang in her head like a gong. _Pull yourself together. You pride yourself on knowing people. Well, he’s people, isn’t he? He’s knowable, just like anyone._

She breathed in and squared her shoulders. Damn research protocol. If she’d come here for private reasons, as a citizen, she could have asked different questions. Now she was disguised as a scientist and had to play by the _fucking RULES goddammit fuck fuck shit _\- rage, blood red and pure, pulled a gasp from her - _keep it together keep it together fuck shit fuck_. She forced her lungs to fill and empty, grounded herself by staring at the iron circling his extremities, but she couldn't fight the image of a damned ghost, dragging its chains along the endless corridors of an asylum dressed up in fancy language.

Through the cotton in her ears she heard Arthur say, “To really get it, you have to live it."

Her strategies were working, her pulse was slowing. She nodded to fill the void where she couldn't yet trust her voice. _Lived experience_, her brain translated with a weary sneer. _Feminist reflexivity_. _Phenomenological approach_. She cleared her throat, once more a picture of scientific calmness. “You have to live it to get it. Is that a concession that nobody can find your jokes funny because in the end, they’re not _you_?”

He leaned back, making the chair squeak and the chains clank. Resting his elbow in his hand and a thumb on his cheek, he finally winced as the cigarette glow ate into the filter. “Yes,” he said, softly as ever. “And no. That’s my point. People don’t even try. You’re only here because I’m famous. Because I’m an exotic animal in a cage and you can watch from the safety of your…” He gestured vaguely, burned fingers trembling. “When you walk out of here and meet another one like me, you’ll cross the street and pretend he’s not there. That’s how much you’ll have learned from taking an interest in the latest tabloid nutcase. You can only swallow me because you think you know what I’m about. A stranger with a weird hat who’s mumbling to himself… that’s another story, one you won’t want to read.”

She swallowed down a kaleidoscope of pointless words.

He spread his hands. “You don’t even try. None of you do. But _I did_. I took pointers from the best. Learned how to be funny from the experts. I consulted the fucking…” He gave her a chilling once-over. “… textbook. But it didn’t work. _Textbooks don’t work_. And you know why? Because you can’t tell other people’s jokes.”

“Why not?” Her hand was gripping the pen too tight. “As a comedian, shouldn’t you channel what everyone thinks? Isn’t that their job, to hold up a mirror to humanity, not just to themselves?”

An indulgent smile spread on his face. “A comedian, yes. A _joker_, on the other hand…” The smile turned briefly predatory, and then he shrugged. “But I do hold up a mirror. It’s just too broken. People want to look good in it, but they don’t.”

“_You’re _a mirror?” she said too heatedly. “Most of us don’t go around killing people, you know.”

“But you want to.”

A sudden burn in her face made her fingers twitch. “You want the lunatics to find their reflection in you, is that it? You want to give them a story that fits, a glass slipper for the antisocials, assuring them they’re special, that there’s a prince just for them, just like their delusions tell them?" She shook her head. "You know, some people actually go through trauma without subjecting others to their own pain.” _Unprofessional. Stop talking_. “What you do is give people like you a carte blanche to stop trying.”

“I give people like _you_ a reason to _start_ trying!”

The bang on the table echoed off the guard’s frown. Time to intervene? _No_, she thought. _Not yet_.

She caught Arthur’s gaze once again, braved the dark glow, a pair of poisonous spiders trapped in a sallow face. “I’m trying."

“Are you?”

“I’ve tried my whole life. Why do you think I’m here? Wasting my time on a hopeless case?”

He cocked his head and smiled.

She closed her eyes. “That’s not what I…” She clenched her teeth. “Look.” Her eyes snapped open again. “I get it.” _Ignore the twitch in his eyebrows_. “We can’t wish you away by pretending you don’t exist. By hiding you in here. To remove a weed you have to dig out the root, get your hands dirty. But we’re already wasting resources keeping you locked up, sweeping away the debris from your carnage. We don’t want to give you even more fuel, even more attention. We don’t want to buy your story, see the joke your way, because if we do…” She stopped to catch her breath. “You think we owe you because you’re a man, don’t you? That your story shouldn’t be this way when others of your kind came out on top. That _you_ should be on top. Well, it doesn’t work that way. We don’t owe you, and we’re not going to stoke your structurally endorsed narcissism with our sympathy. We’re going to change the narrative that makes you believe you’re owed, that makes you think something is wrong because you failed in spite of your gender.”

For the longest time, he was still. She had the time to prepare her defense, to go over the story of the poor little rich girl who had actually fought to get where she was thank you very much, before he ground the long-extinguished cigarette butt to mush in the ashtray and leaned forward. “‘We’?”

She resisted the urge to recoil. “Yes.”

“But you’re here. Stoking my narcissism as we speak. Fishing for my side of the story.”

“Well, it’s my job to…”

“What?”

“Understand.”

A rush of… something. A landslide, inside, a heap of stones tumbling off her. It was true. She didn’t need to find an answer. She didn't need to defend her interest in his case. All that was required of her was to understand, and to clothe that understanding in theory and publishable words. Policy, laws, measures, the real world snake pit of actual decisions – all of that came after, and it was someone else’s headache. She was only here to, well… _get it_.

And as she thought it, for just the briefest moment, it felt as if she did.


	2. Paint it black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I look inside myself and see my heart is black  
I see my red door I must have it painted black
> 
> (Rolling Stones originally, but I like [Echo and the Bunnymen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMZ_vvWm6u4))

When she stepped back onto the noisy street, it was hard to believe it was the world out here that was supposed to be the sane one. She hadn’t walked ten steps before she was bumped into by a tattered-looking lady with a shopping cart, an aura of rotten fish around her. Resisting the urge to step down from the pavement, Harleen hurried towards the bus stop, but when she approached it something felt wrong. She was taking the bus because the subway scared her? Fuck that.  
  
Picking up speed again, she passed the sorry-looking signpost just as the 48 slowed down by the curb and gobbled up a pair of elderly gentlemen and a mother squeezing a screaming baby. Anything to avoid that, really. A couple of yards further down the road there was the yawning chasm of the subway, and Harleen went straight down the whale’s throat, straight into the darkness. After her meeting with Arthur just now, a simple train ride had no power to unnerve her.  
  
Because yeah, she was shaken. She felt… changed. As if just being in the same room with him and entertaining his dubious reality for a while had skewed her perspective beyond repair. Not that she’d let him turn her head. She knew it happened, and she knew she wasn’t immune. Just because she could parrot the statistics of women marrying convicted felons and enumerate the factors that contributed to such perversities, that didn’t mean her brain was armored against it. She was a lump of flesh and electric impulses same as everyone else. It was the greatest failure of psychology: that knowledge alone did nothing to shield you.  
  
But she was intact. She was fine. She’d met with the devil and she’d come out victorious.  
  
Shuffling to a stop on the platform, she ducked her head and gazed at the rails like you did if you wanted to avoid the weirdos. Fuck. Arthur might be a killer, but he was right. She wasn’t interested in any old nutcase. She had no wish to reach out to some random knife-wielding psycho. She'd enjoyed the carefully choreographed one-on-one in the hospital with a guard at her beck and call, but real life? Not a chance.  
  
She raised her eyes to an advertisement on the opposite wall: a man in a gaudy suit grinning his face off to convince her of the virtues of some insurance policy or other. How did they get those teeth to look so white? And how did they think she’d buy that there was any assurance of anything?  
  
There was a far-off rumble and a subterranean wind began to blow. She stared at the loony smile and the colorful lapels and the weird stance of the insurance guy, and suddenly something was wailing inside her, desperate to get out. A puff of air from the tunnel made her eyes blink and tear up, and the image on the wall stretched and split, moving as if alive through the magic of light refracted in water.  
  
The man was dancing in her eyes.  
  
Squeezing them shut, she felt moisture dew her lashes. When she opened them again, the train roared into view and screeched to a long, drawn-out halt. She wiped her face and hurried inside. Sitting by a graffiti-splashed window, she took out her notepad and rummaged for the percussive pen she’d tried to drum out hidden truths with, but couldn’t find it. Murphy’s Law definitely applied to bags: everything you wanted was hidden in the folds at the very bottom. Giving up, she turned to an old page and re-read the lines jotted there:  
  
_The wheel turns_  
_And nothing’s ever new_  
_But something is new_  
_And everything is new_  
_’Cause this time it’s you_  
_’Cause this time it’s not you_  
  
She let out a soft snort. As if she’d known he would prove impossible to read. As if some part of her had divined that Arthur Fleck the Joker wouldn’t fit a single template. She heaved a sigh that lowered her shoulders and made her aware of a cramp where the backpack straps had dug into her flesh. She stared out of the window at the occasional spark and flash in the darkness. It seemed fitting, poetic. A beat to her silent song.  
  
_’Cause this time it’s you._ Was it wishful thinking? The hubris of the professional who thought they had the Cure, or the romantic pipedream of an eternal girl who hoped to change him? She wanted to curse at herself, but she couldn’t start muttering on the train, people would stare. It was bad enough when they caught her rambling into her tape recorder.  
  
Speaking of which. She pulled the machine from her bag – the notepad had been for show, after all – and a pair of headphones. She plugged them in and rewound the tape, pressed play… and at once, there it was: his voice, a mellow murmur over the rattle of rails. The chilling gentleness of the very dangerous, a painted-on mildness to set off their capacity to kill.  
  
Or was it a resigned whisper from the human scrapheap?  
  
Nothing like a good old hopeless conundrum to keep her scattered brain interested. Too many projects had foundered on the rocks of her indifference. So far, this one managed to keep her on her toes. She had no idea what she was getting into, and in some secret part of her soul she fucking loved it.  
  
But as she continued listening to the recording, her heart sank. She’d posed all the wrong questions. She sounded like a rookie whose fucking _feelings_ got in the way. Worse, she’d spoken for him – spoken _over_ her interview subject like a fucking idiot. So eager to plaster her interpretations on his flimsy replies, the results were hardly analyzable. What had she let him say on his own? Nothing. It was all spoon-fed from her theory-riddled brain. And now he knew how to answer her. She’d given him the damn key.  
  
And yet there were crumbs in there, places where he’d exploded into miniature monologues, just like she’d hoped he would when she crafted her insidious interview guide. Not that she’d followed it very closely, but perhaps something of the tone in it had shone through, because he’d responded to some of her prodding.  
  
She rewound, pressed play again.  
  
_Textbooks don’t work_, that quietly menacing voice reiterated. _Because you can’t tell other people’s jokes_. She stopped the tape, eyes lost in the blur of the approaching station. Somewhere at the back of her mind she knew it was hers: time to gather her things and follow the dictate of the subway system. Time to bow to the fucking rules.  
  
As the train slowed down, signs and adverts flashed by like the supposed reel of life at the moment of death. The platform was generic and drab, a couple of ground-down suits mingling with vagrants among the piss-painted pillars to create a tableau of quiet despair. A flight of stairs completed the image–  
  
She caught her breath. There was a figure, almost-running, flashing into intermittent view. Arm stretched out with a gun like an exclamation mark after the ultimate _fuck you_. Death approaching fast, too fast to understand, too fast to get it.  
  
No. It was an illusion. Wasn’t it? She let out a shaky breath as the train slowed to a stop. No one was running out there. No one was even moving. They all stood lost in their thoughts, waiting for the sliding machinery to let them through.  
  
She rammed her equipment into her backpack and hurried to the doors.  
  
_The seasons turn_  
_And yet I never change_  
_And yet something has changed_  
_And everything has changed_  
_’Cause this time it’s not me_  
_’Cause this time I am me_  
  
The words came to her in a breathless whisper as she pushed past the people outside and made it up the stairs, sore feet groaning in their winter boots for every steep step. She needed to get up, out of this graffiti-smeared hellhole. Like dogs spraying their territory, underground creatures painted the town red, blue, and white. Wherever there was a pristine surface, they would appear out of nowhere and soil it. And through it all, the running figure still flickered in her brain, overlaid with that slowly blooming smile of his, smoke curling through his lips – had there been smoke when he smiled, or was she already corrupting the memory? She hadn’t written any field notes, how stupid could a person get? She should have scribbled furiously through the whole train ride. Instead she had sat there losing her mind in the recorded hum of his voice.  
  
_And the darkness that I love_  
_Closes in_  
_Without closing out_  
_And this is what I sought_  
_And oh, it wins me over_  
_Oh, I lose you again_  
  
She ran even though there was no rush. Ran to the looming edifice that promised oblivion and the slow ticking of clocks. Another world, a safe warren. A cage of a different kind.  
  
***  
  
The university didn’t lie that far from the station, but she arrived out of breath, her bun a drooping sadness at the back of her head as she heaved open the glass door to her department and glanced into the administrator’s office without getting a glance back. The tape recorder dug into her back, shoved carelessly in among the books and her real clothes, but it was only a few steps more, only a dirt-yellow mile to the chair, _her_ chair. Proper office chair with all the plushness and tiny squeaking mechanisms to do her every bidding.  
  
Collapsing in its embrace – such comfort after the plastic horror of the visitor’s chair in Arkham – she fumbled out the tape recorder again. She had to hear it, had to… to… well, transcribe. Relieved to find a rational outlet for her nervous energy, she switched on the computer her department had splurged on and stared as it whirred to life, humming its repetitive little tune to assure itself it was okay. De-de-deet-dit-dit-dit… aaand happy face.  
  
She froze. But it was only the Macintosh hello figure, nothing more sinister than that. Why did she suddenly see signs everywhere?  
  
Emptying her bag onto the desk, she grabbed the studded belt and looped it around her hips. Put on the dog collar and pulled the elastic from her hair, shaking it out and running her hands through it. There were tangles she’d just ignored this morning when she swooped the whole wretched thing into that bun and sprayed it into place. No matter. No one was interested in her tangles, so she let them be. Kicking off her shoes, she added the final touch: a pair of knee-high striped stockings over the million-denier, winter-warm pantyhose.  
  
Breathing out, she closed her eyes for a moment. Good to be back.__  
  
A knock on the door made her look up. Fiona stood in the corridor, shoulders hunched to signal remorse at disturbing any super deep thoughts. “Back from the loony bin?” she asked, eyes dipping to take in Harleen’s appearance. Weird, she knew. Childish. Too much color, too little restraint. Strangely modest and toeing the line of office-friendly, but still… so wrong. It wasn’t hard to see herself with their eyes: how she only made the grade because she filled a hole in the department. Nobody else knew how to do what she did. They didn’t even know if she did a good job of it, that’s how clueless they were. But at least her out-there research earned her a place at the table.  
  
She belonged. Compared to him, she belonged.  
  
“Sick of your new boyfriend yet?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Don’t go all Stockholm on us now, you hear?” Fiona laughed. “I don’t want a wedding invitation.”  
  
“Are you out of your mind?”  
  
“So why are you blushing?”  
  
“Because I’m… affronted!”  
  
Fiona chuckled. “Harleen… you get so caught up in all your things. Loosen up a little. Every single project can’t be the lost treasure of Tutankhamun, can it?”  
  
Harleen frowned at the grey screen where ClarisWorks et al. were taking shape.  
  
“So… coming to the seminar?” Fiona asked with the careful tone of one who expected the wrong answer and was too afraid of conflict to come out and complain already.  
  
“Uuh…”  
  
“The PhD students are presenting their projects.”  
  
“Yeaaah…?” Harleen stalled. “Um, I can’t… I don’t want to abandon this right now. Gotta… strike while the iron is hot.”  
  
(Iron shackles keeping him away from her. A piece of metal her saving grace. Because without it, they'd all be free to do what they damn well pleased.)  
  
“Yes, we all have too little time, don’t we?” Fiona beamed, exaggerated joviality filling in for annoyance. “You sure Prince Charming can’t wait?”  
  
Prince… Harleen’s eyes darted up to her bulletin board where newspaper clippings binged on Clown Prince headlines. Blood, blood everywhere. No, not blood, of course not blood, they couldn’t show that in the paper. But red. Red mouth, red suit, even red eyebrows. Red like rage, like nails.  
  
“Harleen?”  
  
“Oh…” She shot a smile at the doorway. “You know…” She hesitated. PhD student presentation? A group of mumbling fools who said they were doing qualitative studies but were so terrified of losing their quantitative training wheels they insisted on waving numbers around instead of fucking _reasoning_. Instead of telling it like it was: the subway is an iron cage. 

Her shoulders fell. She’d missed too many department must-shows. “Alright.”  
  
***  
  
The door opened and the shuffling little group of doctoral students were let into the seminar room. As they took their seats, their eyes darted this way and that, apparently trying to figure out how to look like a proper researcher. The déjà vu was painful. Harleen grabbed a chair at the back and scanned the other faces that were lined up around the U-formed row of tables. There were five students, but the bulk of the group was made up of supervisors, not only from the department of psychology. Luckily she hadn’t been assigned a student in a while, so she’d be able to sit this one out. Just observe and judge in silence. _My favorite pastime, doncha know_.  
  
“Hel-_lo_ Harleen,” Geraldine whispered to her right. “I’m so glad you joined us this time.”  
  
“Oh… Well, Fiona persuaded me.”  
  
Geraldine gave a sour smile.  
  
“Welcome, everyone,” Professor Dahlberg greeted them from the blackboard. He had a creaky, monotonous voice, vaguely reminiscent of a frog. “I’m Professor Dahlberg, and I’m in charge of this research school…”  
  
Harleen leaned back and crossed her arms. God, this was a waste of time. She already knew everything everyone was going to say. Perhaps not the visiting researchers from other departments, but as soon as she knew their affiliation, she would suss them out.  
  
“Anyway, enough about the boring stuff,” Dahlberg grinned after some ten minutes of droning on about how they’d applied for a grant and got it, how exciting it was (still in his croaky frog voice) to have so many talented young people come together to learn, and so on and so forth until any sane person would want to scream. “Now I’d like to know a little bit about your projects. Lucas. Will you start?”  
  
The student to Geraldine’s right leaned forward. “Uh… that’s me.”  
  
Professor Dahlberg gave him a look of rehearsed interest. “Go ahead.”  
  
“Well, I…” Lucas coughed. “My name is Lucas Larsson, and my project is about student attitudes to learning.”  
  
Geraldine sat up straight. _Oh, here we go_. “Attitude?” Her face wasn’t exactly stern, but it wasn’t inviting either, and her mousy bob did nothing to soften her impassive stare. Harleen resisted an urge to roll her eyes.  
  
“Oh… yeah.” Lucas smiled. “I’m thinking that, you know, attitude to a subject is really important to be able to learn about it, and new knowledge-”  
  
“Wait,” Fiona interrupted. “You said ‘knowledge’. What do you mean by that?”  
  
Jesus. Harleen opened her notepad, pretending to take notes as an oppressive silence descended on the room. A few strokes of the pencil, and a shape took form on the page. It was vaguely familiar, and she continued drawing as the poor student tried to explain. What did these people care what knowledge really was? They just wanted to debate definitions ad nauseam – preferably with swords.  
  
_Writing about reality as the rest of us live it_.  
  
Further down the U-formed row of tables, Harleen’s old supervisor crossed his arms. “And attitude, you say? Really, that’s…” He pressed his lips together. “I mean, have you read up on attitudes at all, Lucas?”  
  
Harleen’s back prickled, but her pencil danced over the paper, free to explore outside the confines of academic hair-splitting. To her right, she felt Geraldine’s disapproval mount. _Well, fuck you_. _Drawing is my method today, okay?_ Long, long legs, a confident stride, the curve of a jacket that flapped as the emerging figure walked towards her on the page.  
  
“Are you using the theory of planned behaviour?” a man Harleen didn’t recognize asked. “Because if you are, I can tell you right now that it’s been criticized for being too rational.”  
  
She looked up. _Now you’re talking_.  
  
“I’m in sociology myself, and these _psychologists_ are… well, they do like their little experiments, don’t they?”  
  
A ripple of resentment washed through the room, and Harleen smiled. _Take that_. The figure under her pen gained a hand close to his face, pinching a cigarette, and she knew where she’d seen the image before. The flaring hair, the seven-mile stride, the stare. It had been in the papers eight years back. A poor choice from the editors. _Look at this monster_, they’d wanted to say, but choosing a photo like that? It was tantamount to a fucking advert for serial killing.  
  
_So easy even a lunatic can do it_.  
  
“Well, I was thinking I might do a survey–” Lucas said.  
  
“To study _attitude_?” The screech came from Geraldine.  
  
“Um, well, or perhaps interviews…” Lucas looked around the room and his gaze snagged on Harleen’s. _Oh no buddy, you’re not going to get help from me._ And yet she did make a sympathetic face, because hell, they actually lived off fresh meat and there was no reason to scare the suckers off. Perhaps encouraged by her fake smile, Lucas said, “I really think students should have motivation to be able to learn a subject, so that’s what I want to ask them about.”  
  
“Wait a minute, did you say ‘motivation’?” Fiona asked. “Just now you were talking about attitudes.”  
  
“Well, yes, the attitude towards the subject decides if they have motivation or not, right?” Lucas fumbled a smile.  
  
“But… _Lucas_.” Geraldine sounded like a disappointed parent. “Those terms are from entirely different fields of enquiry. You have to decide which one you want to study – attitude or motivation. I mean, really.”  
  
“Oh… Well, attitude, then, I suppose.”  
  
Geraldine sighed. “No, no, Lucas, you can’t decide what to study before you’ve got a foundation to stand on. And you can’t use words that you don’t know what they mean. Not in a research paper.”  
  
“And _motivation_.” A man at the front wrinkled his nose. “I mean, at the department of pedagogy, we prefer to talk about empowerment. Is that what you mean, Lucas? Do you want to study empowerment?”  
  
Fiona nodded sagely, still staring at Lucas. “Or are you really talking about autonomy?”  
  
Lucas looked comically fish-like, an expression Harleen remembered perfecting during her own years of getting trodden on for a living. She’d felt so stupid, so ill-fitting, a poster girl for impostor syndrome. Now she was one of them, one of the snarky fuckers who tossed words like ontology and epistemology around like hand grenades. It was enough to make anyone slit their wrists.  
  
Professor Dahlberg cleared his throat. “Alright, well, but if we could get back to the method,” he said. “Because that’s really the most important thing, isn’t it?”  
  
“How can he choose a method before he’s got his terminology straight?” Geraldine snapped.  
  
“Never mind the terminology,” Fiona said. “What I want to know is your ontological standpoint, Lucas. I mean, if you’re going to use _surveys_…”  
  
There it was, bang on time. There were a few pitying tuts in the room, but Harleen could hardly keep her countenance. _Symbolic violence_, came to her in a flash of cold light, and her stomach turned. Wasn’t one of those people from the department of pedagogy? Well, what kind of dark pedagogy was this? The natural selection method? Beat them to a bloody pulp and give the degree to anyone still standing.  
  
“I, uh…” Lucas faltered. He obviously had no idea what ‘ontological standpoint’ meant. “I haven’t decided yet.”  
  
“Well, that’s the problem, then, isn’t it? You have no idea what you’re basing your study on, so you can’t make any methodological decisions, because you’re working in a void!”  
  
Harleen frowned at her drawing. There was no background, no cityscape to set the figure off. Just an anomaly in a great big nothing. As if he was alone in the world, alone in _her_ world. Everything else melting into a blur as he came into focus.  
  
“And if I may add,” Geraldine said. “If you do decide to conduct interviews, you should really question the power relation between you and the respondents.”  
  
Harleen’s cheeks warmed. On the page, her finished drawing leered at her. A snapshot from the past, and yet still so fresh, so new. Her rendition of reality, one way of looking at it. Her way. Imposing her perceptions on a person who had his own.  
  
She looked up. Everyone looked fucking miserable. Why did they string this along so unnecessarily? Prolonging their own suffering for the sake of a script that led nowhere?  
  
She raised her hand. “I just want to add that it was shown decades ago that attitude doesn’t actually have anything to do with behavior.”  
  
For a moment the room was utterly quiet. _The Harleen has spoken._  
  
But the student didn't know about the power structures here, and he just went ahead and broke the silence. “I can change it. I could just skip the attitudes, if that’s a problem. Maybe… well, maybe I could call it ‘perception’? Students’ _perceptions_ of the learning subject?”  
  
A few seconds passed. Had Lucas found the right word at last, the magic word that would let him off the hook? Drum roll.  
  
Of course not.  
  
With a sigh, Geraldine crossed her arms. “Perception? Well, good luck making that fly with the department of pedagogy.”  
  
***  
  
After the seminar, Fiona tried tempting her with her usual menu of coffee and backstabbing, but Harleen had had enough. “I need to write up my field notes while I can still interpret my hieroglyphs.”  
  
“Right.” Fiona’s smile turned sour. “Don’t let me disturb you.”  
  
The silence after she swished off was laced with sweat. Harleen wanted to do what was expected, she really did, but this new… _thing_, it called to her, and she couldn’t resist. If she neglected it, it would fester like an untended wound. _You get so caught up_. Well, it was that or utter apathy. Take your fucking pick.  
  
Donning her headphones once again, she opened a MacWrite document and laid her fingers on the keyboard. Headphones on, enter the cocoon. Spin a hibernation blanket from the silk of strangled vocal cords.  
  
But it wasn't his voice that caught her attention this time. “So you’re going for the tragic childhood dollar.” The recorded smirk seared the magnetic strip with its mockery. Harleen went rigid. In the safety of her office, her tone sounded… sadistic. No, Jesus, calm down. Not sadistic. But condescending. Like she knew everything. Had him sussed out, when nothing could be farther from the truth. “You think we owe you.”  
  
Her fingers lay stiff and cold on the keyboard, unable to type a single letter. _He’s killed people_, she reminded herself, but that couldn’t change her utterly glacial attitude on that tape. What if it was true, what if it was all true? If he’d been abused like the story went – _if_, because the journal was lost, of course it was, no one knew where it was and there were doctors willing to swear both that every word was true and that it was all lies – but if every single gory detail was correct, what then? He’d paid it forward with interest to people who weren’t exactly innocent but who also hadn’t done him wrong enough to merit death.  
  
She stared at the empty page. Nothing could explain away that he’d shot them dead, those guys, those snotty brats from money. Sure, they’d beat him up, but he’d shot to kill. The punishment far outweighed the crime.  
  
And yet…  
  
Her fingers trembled over the keys. She knew there were studies she could use. Research that explained it all, tied it up in that neat theoretical bow they all thirsted for. But somehow, even though all the pieces fit, she couldn't bring herself to pull out a book, find the page, and write the reference. Somehow she couldn't help seeing the cracks in between the categories. The flaws in the perfect system.  
  
R. E. A. L. The letters burst into being on the white background of the MacWrite document. Would have hammered loudly, _pow-pow-pow_, if she’d still had her old typewriter. L. I. F. E. She paused. Subway cars flashing by in her head, through grey tunnels to greyer stations, the only splash of color a criminal act. She punched in more letters, more of the forbidden, unfettered words that should only go into her notepad. _Real life graffiti. Painted on bodies_. _A bloody asterisk to remind us there’s a whole other world behind the main story. A scarlet footnote to the history written by our beloved conquerors, the people who run the city so smoothly, run it into the ground. Graffiti is an offence, a blot on the face of Gotham. But the spray can is just another voice in the pissing contest of the public space. The blood red tag on the train window wasn’t commissioned by the mayor, but it’s no more a blot than Lady Gotham or Wayne Tower._  
  
_It’s just another voice._  
  
The phone rang, and she jumped. The screen in front of her glowed pale, strange words sprawling over pristine white like baby spiders. _Poisonous spiders in a sallow face_.  
  
“Yes?” She turned away from the receiver and cleared her throat. “Doctor Quinzel speaking.”  
  
“… in there! Hurry, he’s bleeding to death.” The breathless voice was sawed in two by a shrieking bell in the distance. “Yes, hello, Doctor Quinzel? This is Doctor Kane from Arkham asylum.”  
  
“Hello…” Her vocal cords cracked drily. That bell. Who did it toll for?  
  
_Ask not_.  
  
“I’m so sorry to disturb you, and I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I need to warn you, Doctor. Mister Fleck… you’ve been visiting him, haven’t you?”  
  
“Once.” The telephone started slipping in her moist hand. “Earlier today, we–”  
  
“He’s escaped. He slashed his way out, apparently he got hold of a pen – I have no idea how it happened, but he’s on the loose and he knows your name and he’s _dangerous_. Please don’t be alone tonight. Perhaps you should go to the police.”  
  
Something clicked in her throat. “And… tell them what?”  
  
“Commit a crime, whatever, have them lock you up. Anything to get you out of harm’s way.”  
  
A sinus tone filled her head. There was more talking, and she answered, but her lips were cut loose from her brain and it was only a lifetime of pleasantries and nodding and humming in the right places during meaningless conversations that helped her stumble through the rest of the phone call. When the hypnotist snapped his fingers with that time-honored euphemism ‘goodbye’ (fuck off), she knew to hang up. It was all clockwork, all preordained. Everyone played their roles to perfection.  
  
And at her elbow, the tape continued rolling through the interview, headphones whispering, _It’s all there, why not step into the shoes that fit?_


	3. Strangers in the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something in your eyes  
Was so inviting  
Something in your smile  
Was so exciting
> 
> ([Frank Sinatra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd_3EkGr0-4))

She didn’t go to the police, didn’t even book a hotel room. She did stay late at the university to put off the inevitable, but when twilight fell and shadows crept into the corners, she no longer felt comfortable staying. He knew where she worked, so cowering in her office wouldn’t save her.

Actually nothing would. She’d made fun of him, dismissed him. If that wasn’t a capital offence, what was? No, she would pay.

So was it courage, stupidity, or a death wish that took her from A to B? Was she brave to go home to her officially listed address and climb the creaking stairs alone, unarmed? Her building was shabby but not run down. It wasn’t usually frequented by lowlifes, but every now and then there was a break-in. Neighbors sometimes helped out, called the police, but mostly not. You could never tell if a scuffle was real or if you’d make a fool of yourself if you intervened. Better leave it alone and hope you weren’t drawn into something over your head.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs, her flight of stairs. _Half-running figure, arm held out, gun cracking_. She breathed in and held it. The lights were low, giving the space a strange kind of calmness that didn’t match her pulse. As if everyone in here was already dead.

Nothing for it. She gripped the banister and took a step. Then another. The polished wood slid like a lover’s caress against her palm, marking her progress. Higher, higher, closer to whatever was her destiny. The lamps on her floor found her face, pooled in the dreary coronas of a horror movie. _I’m starring in my own death scene_. In the middle of quiet panic, she pulled a weak smile. That was funny. It was so funny even Joker might agree.

She reached the top step, and there was her door. Brown wood, anonymous. Didn’t tell her anything. Could hide whatever surprise. She walked up to it and laid her hand on the flat surface. Gauged it like a chest, probed for the beating within. But her heart was loud, too loud to hear anything else. Her ribs groaned with the strain of keeping her lungs in place. Her veins couldn’t take it. They would burst from the pressure, _pop pop pop_, like distant gunfire. 

Or was that real?

She tried the handle. Soundless, it turned. Soundless, the door swung open. No key. It was already unlocked.

Alright. So now at least she knew.

Slowly, carefully, she stepped inside. There was a disturbance in the air, in the way the dust motes fell. The silence could break at any moment. Somewhere in there was a spasm-like laugh waiting to happen.

She didn’t close the door behind her, just crept as quietly as she could in her winter boots to the umbrella stand. Lowering a hand into it, she fumbled for the comfort of her baseball bat – and found it! She allowed herself a split second to breathe a silent thank you to whatever was out there, watching over her. He hadn’t found the bat. Perhaps now she stood a chance.

Moving into the darkness, she leaned past the doorframe to the living room. _Gently does it_... The TV came into view, and then the couch and the window. Was there movement in there? The corners were black and the furniture was grey. If she craned her neck to see the bottom of the curtains, would there be bulging clown shoes sticking out?

She let out a trembling breath – she had to, or she would burst. It ached on the way up her throat, it wanted out, out, quickly, but letting it out fast would make too much noise. A sudden itch in her glottis provoked her coughing reflex, like a needle in there. She closed her muscles on it, pressed her throat into a tight channel. Her eyes watered and her cheeks burned. She swallowed again and again, blinked away the tears, and strained her eyes to take in the living room dusk.

No one. Not a living soul.

The kitchen, then?

A sudden scraping sound jerked her head towards the bathroom. A muffled pop, then a sound as if from a bag of Maltesers spilling on the floor. Harleen’s heart heaved in her chest. Every organ in her body wanted out. Stepping closer to the wall, she steadied herself against it. Alright. Okay. The bathroom. Was he after meds? Or was he planning to knife her in the shower? Perhaps he’d waited all night for her and just needed a tinkle.

Breathing in, she finally conquered her need to cough – just as the bathroom door opened and a clown came out. Her eyes caught the tuft of green hair – fake hair, one of those masks, he was wearing a _mask_, fuck – and then he saw her. Froze on the doorstep, one hand holding a bottle of – get this – coughing syrup. For a moment they both just stood there, or was that her fight-or-flight mode brain slowing everything down for her viewing pleasure? He stared at her through tiny holes, and she knew she couldn’t use the bat, had never done it, didn’t know the first thing about swinging a fucking bat.

But then he lunged, and her body contracted like a coil, every muscle up to the job. A primal crouch, and then _bang_ she unfurled her arms and swung it – too low, but it caught him _crunch _in the elbow and he howled, he howled and fled through the front door, back the way he’d come, entrance turned exit, and the sound of him disappeared down the corridor as she breathed and breathed and couldn’t get enough air ever again. The _crack_, the sickening fucking crack. Something had shattered in there. Her ears echoed with it as she stared at the washed-out yellow rectangle of the corridor, prepared to see the clown return at any second–

And in stepped a man. Perfectly framed by the doorway, a mere silhouette against the pale glow, but the stance was not to be mistaken. He had no mask on. His hair, his real hair curled around his head and fell to his shoulders, brushed his lapels. He had a dancer’s pose, one foot out, prepared for a pirouette. An elegant, bony hand traced the same line, and the other one was brandished like a _ta-daa_. Only thing missing was a cane.

When he spoke, it was crushed velvet. “Hello, Harley.”

She whimpered. She actually did that. And then she choked on her own breathing and swallowed it with an ugly gulping sound.

“Aw, Harley...” He let his arms fall to his sides. “No air? Let me help.”

He moved towards her, and she recoiled with a gasp, but he passed her, the shock of some strange, candy-like smell the only thing that hit her. He walked straight to the window and opened it, pushing it as high as it could go.

“There. Isn’t that better?” He turned on his heel, suaveness personified, and smiled at her – she knew he smiled because a streetlamp cut his face in two and there were teeth. His smile was both painted on and real, the only thing she couldn’t know was if–

If it reached his eyes? Was that what she was about to fucking think? _Get a grip, girl_. She tightened her hold on the bat, but moisture had it gliding precariously.

“Isn’t it better?” Joker demanded.

“Y-yes!” she burst out, retching for air, everything topsy-turvy and she thought she would throw up. “Yes...”

“Aw,” Joker said again and stepped closer. She held the bat up between them like a sword – a fucking sword, she really didn’t have a clue. Joker raised his hands - slowly, as if to emphasize his good intentions - and closed them on the bat, just above her hand. Taking over. He cocked his head and met her eyes in a kind of parental supplication, or maybe it was how you’d look at a dog when you wanted it to let go of the stick. His eyes gleamed in the darkness, hypnosis distilled, like a drug manufactured for one person only, exclusive as fuck because yeah, it fucking worked, it worked on her. Against her better judgment, her fingers uncramped and let the bat slip away. Just like that he'd hijacked what little free will she still possessed. 

Grabbing the bat - _don't look at those bony hands_ \- he swung it around in the air and she ducked with a gasp, but it was just another Fred Astaire move that had it landing with a smack in his palm. He smiled down at it and bounced it up and down a few times as if gauging its weight. “So how did _that _feel?” he asked conversationally. “Huh? Hitting that guy...” He jerked his head at the door. “He looked a bit worse for wear. Clutched his elbow like the lost treasure of Tutankhamun.”

Her head snapped up, eyes wide. “What?”

He smiled. “Nothing. I just picked up a new phrase. It happens. Wrote it down in my little notebook. You never know what will come in handy.” He slapped the bat into his palm a few times. Then he sighed. “I have nowhere to stay tonight, Harley.” He made a rueful face. “And I would _kill_ for a shower.”

“Use mine,” Harleen whispered.

Joker smiled. “Well, thank you ever so much, Harley. Such hospitality, I thought that was a lost art.” He dropped the bat onto the couch and pointed at the bathroom. “In there?”

She nodded.

“Oh, and don’t worry, I won’t use your white towels.” He gestured at his hair and rolled his eyes at himself. “I’m not entirely without manners.”

Harleen started breathing again – had she stopped, had she not been alive at all the whole time he’d been here? – and watched him walk towards the open door where the clown had stood just a few minutes ago. Switching on the lamp, he exclaimed, “Oh!” and squatted to pick something from the floor. He held it up to the light. “Poor guy. He just needed medication.”

“That’s…” Harleen stumbled on the syllables. “That’s just aspirin.”

Joker didn’t seem to hear her. He was gazing at the white pill between his thumb and forefinger with an awestruck look on his face. “It looks like a _pearl_.”

Harleen gulped, shuddering now, close to tears from the shock of it all. Joker blinked and stood up, facing her.

“Don’t be scared,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you, because you’re not real.” 

With another _ta-daa _gesture, he stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.

***

She’d been trying to rein in her hyperventilation for a good half hour – water pipes howling and squeaking in the background – when he finally came out, wrapped in her bathrobe. His hair was dripping onto the green terrycloth – yes, it was actually green, she realized with a weary jolt. She sought his eyes, and they looked _supplicant_. Pure, unadulterated, childish anticipation in them, a puppy waiting for praise. And she laughed. A hysterical, terrified sound, but goddammit, it was funny: his back-to-black hair seeping diluted food coloring or whatever the fuck onto her green fucking bathrobe. Just perfect. She choked and coughed, and he sat beside her – somehow she’d ended up on the couch – and laid a hand on her back.

“Can I touch you like this?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah,” she forced out, half afraid of what might come of it, but he took his hand away, in fact he put them both in between his knees and raised his shoulders with a sheepish grin.

“Thank you. I never can tell.”

Calming down somewhat, she sat a little straighter and looked at his face. It was wiped completely clean. His eyelashes fluttered in consternation – faked? – and he looked down at his hands that were still trapped between his legs. Nervous? She frowned. Was this even the same man who had swished around her living room like a ballerina? He glanced up from beneath wolfy eyebrows, and her ribs contracted on her heart. He acted like a boy, but good lord did he look like a man.

“What… what did you mean before? When you said I wasn’t real?”

His face fell. “You’re not.” He held up a hand. “No, no. It’s okay. That’s why I found you, because it’s all in my head. I could have gone to a grocery store and I’d have run into you.” 

“I assure you, I’m real.”

He gave her a timid, sorrowful smile. “I thought so at first. When you told me off for being a man.”

“Hang on, that wasn’t… just–”

“No need to explain. It was what I needed to hear. Stop whining, get off your ass and do something, all that. I just need to try harder.” His nose twitched, pulling his lip up in a stifled snarl.

“I shouldn’t have… Look. Yes, you have some protection, being male, but…” She bit her lip, torn between politics and the actual broken man in front of her. “You have a lot against you too.”

The look he gave her was wistful, dubious, almost bewitched. “You laughed at my joke.”

“Yes?”

“That should have tipped me off.”

She hesitated. Nothing in her training had prepared her for this, but what choice did she have? Every move she made, every word she said was a potential death sentence, and yet she had to act. She remembered a colleague who’d had a break-in, a patient who believed they were in a relationship. He’d indulged her, made her dinner and regaled her with witty conversation, and then he’d called the hospital when she fell asleep. Harleen wasn’t sure she could pull off something like that.

But Arthur didn’t think they were in a relationship. He didn’t even think she was real – because she’d laughed at his joke? 

“By the way, you can stay,” Arthur said. “I don’t care if you don’t exist.”

“Stay?” Despite herself, she laughed. “I live here.”

He shrugged.

“You _said_… you needed somewhere to crash,” she reminded him.

Arthur’s eyebrows did a thing, and her stomach clenched. “I crashed long ago.”

“Oh… I meant–”

“You meant sleep.”

“Yes.”

He giggled. “Gotcha.”

Harleen smiled cautiously, eyes on his face to detect any erupting madness. “So is this couch okay?” _Are you serious? Are you seriously offering this lunatic a bed, you demented woman?_

Arthur sobered up. He got the strangest look on his face and his eyes seemed to film over. “Yes,” he whispered. “It’s okay. Thank you.”

Harleen averted her eyes and stood up. “I think I have a blanket in here somewhere,” she said and moved to the hallway to rummage through a closet. Unease crept up on her. It was all too easy. Makeup off, he was Arthur again? She didn’t buy it. Grabbing a blanket, she closed the closet door to find him standing just behind it.

“Jesus!”

“Someday, I want to dance with you.” He looked her straight in the eye. His face was relaxed now, calm - just slightly tinged by a quiet eagerness. But there was none of his awkward ducking, and no flippancy either. Just a seriousness so candid it made her heart jump.

Then he took the blanket from her, walked to the couch, and curled up on it, bathrobe and all. Harleen watched him lie there, eyes closed, nose buried in her cushions. He had one arm wrapped around himself like an abandoned marionette, all knobbly joints and painful angles. The terrycloth looped loosely around his throat, dipping low to reveal a collarbone and a stretch of pale, vulnerable-looking skin. For a moment she just stood there, _I want to dance with you_ bouncing around her skull in search of somewhere, anywhere to perch. But it was a thought so outlandish, it couldn't have a home. It could only roam the backstreets of her mind, windblown like autumn leaves and stoned beyond comprehension on wolf eyes and coughing syrup.

“Okay, well… goodnight?”

She’d never been more glad to have a bedroom door that locked.


	4. All along the watchtower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There must be some kind of way outta here  
Said the joker to the thief  
There's too much confusion  
I can't get no relief
> 
> (Bob Dylan wrote it, but I like [Jimi Hendrix](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY))

Sleep. Such a beautiful mirage.

The night crept by in the flicking of numbers on her clock radio, in the breaths held as she listened for movement, in the occasional siren outside. Her sheets grew damp with sweat and her eyes grew dry and gritty. Now and again she crouched by the door to peek through the keyhole at his motionless form. He slept in a snarl of blanket and bathrobe, twisting himself into a human rope. His mouth was open, dripping saliva on the upholstery, and his leg stuck out, dangling over the edge of the couch. 

It was less hairy than might be expected for such a dark man.

She didn’t feel bad for spying. She had to keep track of what he was up to. If he turned over, she needed to know. Besides, voyeurism was her job. Poking her nose where it might not belong exactly, but where her superior sense of smell could sniff out truths that passed others by.

Way to rationalize. She just wanted to take advantage of his unconsciousness. He’d violated her space, and now it was her turn. She enjoyed her safety behind the bedroom door, enjoyed him flaunted for her consumption. She devoured his exposed throat as a midnight snack. If she’d had her pen, the one he’d stolen from her, she could have stabbed him with it and him none the wiser.

Her brain at night really was a different beast.

Maybe she should capitalize on it. Write something. Analyze. Heart picking up speed, excited to do some work, she went to get her notepad and a felt tip pen. Hands ready, she squinted through the hole at the man-wreck on her couch. His fingers were claws, clutching at the cushion beneath his head. Claws that had held a pillow over his mother's face, that had pulled trigger after trigger.

_Trigger_...

Was it that simple? Did he choose his victims based on logic, however twisted? Could death be non-random, a calculating intelligence behind it, a method to the madness? She frowned, pen hovering above the empty page. Had she known, somewhere, how his mental machinery worked? 

_The wheel turns_  
_And nothing’s ever new_  
_But something is new_...

Her hand started moving, but not to write. It was the hour of the wolf, and words just didn't cut it. Instead it traced a strange form, a skulking animal on two legs. Tufts of fur, but not too much. Human eyes but slanted, ears a little too pointed. Grace like a dancer, hind legs doing a pirouette. Hands clutching a cane, no, something thicker, something that could crunch the fuck out of someone who thought they could come and take what wasn't theirs, that could bash the head in of people who never used it anyway.

She blinked, shifting back from the heightened reality of drawing to the regular timeline of hours and minutes. The notepad came into focus, lines materializing where she hadn't been aware, where she'd just seen plain white paper. The creature was bleeding, but not from a wound. Its head was chaos and thunder, and the teeth were a smile and a snarl that only found its true form on the page, not a computer document that glowed and hummed with civilized modernity, but the visceral feel of actual paper in your hand, the pen that was mightier than the sword. The creature was trapped behind lines meant for writing, but fuck that, she ignored the lines, always did, it was what made her great.

Not great. She'd never been great. But... She shook her head, a cornucopia of thoughts scrambling for a place. Being different, being... _outside. _It made you see things. That's what it was, that's why she had a job and why her colleagues wished she didn't. If you just asked that one question - _are these lines the only way to be, the only possible structure?_ \- you could get answers to raise the hairs at the back of your neck.

Hands trembling, she put the notepad aside. It was nearing five o'clock and she hadn't slept. Time to give her poor battered vessel a break.

A noise from the living room. Her limbs tightened despite the weariness, back on red alert. The primality of survival. Leaning in close, she peered through the keyhole to see Arthur shifting, curling up beneath the blanket and then stretching so it fell away and the bathrobe opened. He was extending like a bow, complete with an arrow jutting out from his crotch, Jesus... 

She was about to look away when his eyes fluttered open. Skin prickling, she scrambled from the keyhole. He couldn’t see her of course, but there was such… _presence _in those eyes, she imagined communication at the slightest glint. Pressing herself against the wall, she weighed her options. He was awake. It was five in the morning and he was rising and she hadn't got a wink of sleep. If it came to blows, she'd snap like a twig. Also, morning wood. Yikes.

As she hesitated, her eyes fell on the notepad. She hadn't realized: the animal wore striped stockings. How odd.

Creeping back to the door, hoping he didn’t notice her shadow filling the tiny opening, she fitted her eye to the keyhole again. The living room had an air of predawn about it. Arthur sat up, all couch-tousled hair and bags under his eyes, for all the world like your regular guy with an early shift. But Joker didn't have a paper round, and the creature that unfurled from her couch didn't set an alarm - he set them off. 

He got up too slowly. _Languidly_. Like he was enjoying it – which was no crime, but seeing him shrug out of her bathrobe like a snake coiling out of its skin, taking pleasure in his own body moving, unfolding, the physicality of stretching it to breaking point… it made her veins swell. He walked over to the window, which was still open (what the hell?) and she thought he was going to close it, but instead he gripped the sill and leaned out, so far out she feared he might fall. Was he listening to something? She thought she could hear voices.

She realized it was him. He was muttering to himself, rocking now, in and out of the window, babbling nonsense. As she watched, transfixed and repulsed, she remembered why she’d abandoned clinical work to pursue that PhD: she didn’t like meeting patients. Not in psychologist form. Interviewing them for studies was fine, that offered a certain distance, but creating an enduring bond, becoming their confidante? Embodying the last straw and feeling responsible if they didn’t get better? She hated that. And what was Arthur but the ultimate patient, the uncurable kind, right here in her living room, in her _private _life, with all his demons and his tics and his toxic cries for help? It was the last thing she wanted. If meeting someone once a week to listen to their grievances was bad, what would it be like to live with their delusions and depression 24/7?

Not that he’d been here six hours strung together yet, but still. What had she been thinking, letting him in here? Alright, she hadn’t had much of a choice, she reminded herself. What, call the police while he pranced around in his costume and scolded her for being a bad girl? No, she’d done the only thing that made sense. That she hadn’t called anyone in the hours since he curled up on that couch, now that was another matter. Had she been… what? Too scared? Perhaps. Or Stockholmed – so quickly? Ridiculous. Drawn in by the danger she normally just fantasized about? Exhilarated by headlines come true, the black and white print bleeding out before her waking eyes?

Well, this was reality: not the cosmetic craziness of darkly handsome wolf eyes, but a rocking, muttering rubber stick of a man who was hanging out the window from the fifth floor and didn’t even notice the cold.

She rubbed her forehead, at a loss. What the hell could she do? He was here now. She’d given her permission – if ‘give’ was the right word. She’d let him wrench it from her, giving up in the face of a force stronger than her. And he wasn’t a vampire. She couldn’t just rescind her invitation.

“Harley?”

She jumped. The call was sleep-gravelly, weak. She didn't move a muscle. Did he know she was up or could she pretend? Seconds ticked by as she tried to follow a rational thread of reasoning, a proper textbook response - _textbooks don't work _\- but her daytime logic was drowned out by volatile intuition. She usually trusted it, that intuition. It was what had carried her through doctoral studies designed to grind innocents to mush, and it had spawned more than one crazy theory that turned out to be correct. It had earned her a few publications, to the stunned disbelief of her more orthodox colleagues.

But that was office work. Could she really trust it in situ?

Well, she was alive. That was something. She'd followed her intuition letting him stay here instead of doing the rational thing, so maybe she should stick to that strategy? She looked down at her pajamas. Modest enough. Clenching her teeth, she got up and opened the door. 

Arthur was monkey-crouching by the window, knuckles on the sill holding his weight. When he saw her, he turned his back to the wall and inched along it, sort of... _undulating_, and rubbing his head against the wallpaper, grinning as if very pleased with himself. “Morning.”

She eyed him warily. “Morning.”

Making a twirl - for comic relief, or perhaps drama? - Arthur collapsed on the couch and threw his head back. She watched him sit there, splayed open at the crotch, tentpole wilted now, thank God. Still, she half wished she was back behind the bedroom door, free to look her fill without having to monitor her face. 

Looking up, he patted the empty space beside him. “Want to sit?”

_No_.

“Right, no, of course.” He shook his head at himself and rolled his eyes. “_Soo_-rry.”

“Sure, I’ll sit.”

Why? Because why did anyone do anything.

She stepped softly on the mat – _don’t wake the bear –_ and sat on the very edge of the seat. Even not touching, she could feel the warmth from his leg, his arm: the homely balminess of recent sleep. But she mustn’t notice, mustn’t trace his aura with her cat-killing curiousness. She had no business being aware of his fucking _body_, hell, this was textbook diagnosis developing in real time. _You need to nip this in the bud, Harley_.

Harley?

Arthur sighed. “I guess I’m to blame, but we really need to move past this stage if we’re going to get anywhere. I’m not going to kill you, okay?”

She nodded. "Because I'm not real."

He snorted at some private joke. "_Because_... who will I play with if you're dead?"

A chill raced down her body. Okay. That was one way of looking at it. Something for her intuition to work with. He wanted a playmate? The thought made something screech in her chest. Even with her night brain switched on, could she keep up? He changed so quickly, changed the rules and flipped the tables, sending all the little pieces flying. All those carefully crafted systems that made the world run smoothly. The rules that made you fucking mad but you needed them because what else was there? Without a leash, humans went rabid.

Arthur's leg was bobbing up and down, exuding nervous energy. For a moment she tried to imagine it encased in stripes, but the image didn't fit. _Don't tweak the data to suit your theory_, she remembered her supervisor admonishing her.

_But what if there is no theory for my kind of data?_

Arthur's leg stopped bobbing. “Do you trust me?”

What kind of trick question was that? She kept her eyes averted, but the heat-seeking missile of his gaze found her anyway. “N... no.”

He nodded slowly. “Thank you for your honesty, Harley. I mean it. And for the record, I don’t trust you either.” He let it hang in the air for a moment and then added, “I mean, you must have been a sight for sore eyes with that baseball bat, but I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end.”

He winked at her, she knew he did even without looking, because of his tone and a motion of his head. She glanced at the bat where it lay on the floor. If she needed to, could she reach it from here? And why hadn’t she taken it with her into the bedroom? So many questions. Why had she this, why hadn’t she that? Why had she randomly brought a can opener with her when she ran out of her office last year during that false fire alarm?

“So what do you do when there's not enough trust? You get to know the person. Yes? Okay. So, Harley Quinn, PhD.” He clasped his hands in his lap, over his crotch. “What might we learn about this person if we pose the right questions?”

She raised an eyebrow at him, chancing a playful approach. “The right questions?”

“Oh, sorry, no, you’re right, I don’t have an interview guide, do I? But I do know how to insert a question mark in… well, everything really.”

Now if that wasn’t God’s own truth… She couldn’t help a snort.

His face brightened. “There it is.”

She blushed - she actually blushed, what the fuck, and smiled wider, what was this contortion of her face, she didn't condone it. Her lips slipped over her teeth and bared fangs of disobedient laughter. Forcing herself quiet, she cleared her throat. "Stop it."

_Stop it_. A phrase that tipped over from playful to flirty. But he wouldn't know, would he? He didn't know how to interpret such human signals, and anyway she wasn't actually flirting, she was just so tired and couldn't keep up her facade anymore. Breathing in deeply and meeting his gaze, she wondered what he saw when he looked at her. If she was a figment of his imagination, what role did she fill? Did he buy her public persona, the one she presented to everyone at work, the one that smiled and said _have a nice day_ in grocery stores, that held the door for people who didn't say thank you? So many questions and no way to ask them – not even now, as a civilian, with no tape recorder to document her methodological crimes. And even if she’d had a written list of complaints she needed addressed, that catch in her throat might not let any of them through. Dams were cracking inside her, and it was all she could do to plug the holes with too few fingers.

She let out her breath. “What do you want to know?”

Arthur was quiet for a while, and his face changed. It sort of... clenched. A tremble started by his nose, oh fuck, she knew that look, shit shit fuck, his chin was quivering now, and the look he shot her was feral. When he spoke, it was in a disturbingly familiar sing-song. “I want to know why you feel the need to give your blessing to my suffering.”

It was all she could do not to whimper. “My… blessing?”

“Gatekeep my experience,” he specified. “With political psychobabble.”

“I d–”

“Like,” he held up a hand and spoke with it like a puppet, “you’re a _man_, so you can’t know _anything_. Because diagnoses and torture are a walk in the park when you're _on top of the world_.”

“Look–”

“_And_,” he interrupted, raising his voice, “I want to know why you find me so fascinating.”

She took a moment to gather her thoughts, to find a plea in her own defence that could cut it. “Well, you’re…” She spread her hands, at a loss. Then she said – no, she _thought _she was going to say – “You’re a riddle,” which was its own kind of banal truth, but what came out was, “You don’t have to have been abused to want to watch the world burn.”

What the hell? She froze. It wasn't even a reply to his fucking question, but it had a strange effect on him. A startled chuckle erupted from his lips. “Oh my. _Haaar_-ley, goodness… Bit of a Freudian slip there?”

She became aware of her hand, clamped over her mouth - like a child caught lying. But she wasn’t lying. She was baring a piece of her soul so well hidden she hadn’t known it existed.

No, wait, no. She was just exhausted, confused. It was just her _brain_, that damned _thing_. 

Arthur gazed at her, a new keenness to his countenance. “How right you are. You don’t... need... abuse.” He shook his head as if blown away by her insight.

“Well, it's true," she mumbled, desperately searching for rational back-up to her inadvertent outburst. "Some people just like hurting others, right? Destroying their dreams. It doesn’t have to stem from anything sinister. There doesn’t have to be a reason. Some are just born that way.”

Arthur stared at her for a moment, and then he gave a sudden laugh – at first it sounded like a regular laugh, but it went on for too long and turned strained. It developed muscles and proceeded to choke him. She'd heard about it - the papers loved to gorge themselves on that quirk - but she hadn't witnessed it in person. Where the journalists made much of the symbolism, the reality of it was just... horrifying. He was gagging on his own giggles. She was watching a man commit suicide by mirth.

“And yet the abuse helps, don’t you think?” he managed through his convulsions. “At _least_…” He made a show of considering alternatives, eyebrows knitted in what should have been a amusing imitation of deep thought. “In my case. Right? It fucking _helps_."

The silence after his chuckles died down was sepulchral. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

What was that thing in his eyes, hate? Something else? "I’m so glad _you _didn’t need that nudge.”

Goosebumps racing like wildfire, she forced herself to say, “And that's why we're different," as if trying to make it true, "I want to understand the world, not burn it. I have no reason to, like you have. I have everything. A job, money. I belong." Ignoring his scoff, she went on, "I want everyone to have what I have, I want to make things right again. I want to trace the contours of every system until we know exactly where to flip a switch to make the madness go away.”

He waited a beat, and then he shook his head. “Nah, you want to burn it.”

“Fuck you.”

Oh shit. _Fuck you_? What the hell was wrong with her? She closed her eyes, just waiting for it. _If this is it, at least I had a good run._

But nothing happened. For the longest time, nothing happened, and then she felt something touch her hand. A jolt tore through her, but it was just his hand on hers, cool fingers settling on her knuckles. She opened her eyes. The mat took form, the table, the bat over there on the floor. Her scalp was drenched, she was weak, she wanted to cry, wanted to sleep, wanted out of here. And through it all, his hand lay on hers like... like...

There were no comparisons.

As if her thoughts guided his, he glanced down at their joined fingers and seemed to remember his so called manners. “Is this okay?” he asked.

_What?_

He started to withdraw, but she caught his hand and held it - _if I cling to it, he can't do anything else_ \- and looked him in the eye. "I'm... sorry. Okay? Anything I do wrong... I just don't know. You have to factor that in. No one knows what the fuck..." She ran out of air and fell quiet. She had no lies left in her, she’d left them all at the office, she always did. Normally that didn't matter, because she was alone in her apartment and no one got to see the real her, but this time she had an audience and it was terrifying because she didn’t have to pretend with this man.

The realization hit her like a brick. She could drop her mask. But what if she didn't want to?

“You know, I have something of yours,” Arthur said.

She felt her face with her free hand. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” Releasing her fingers, he stood up and squeezed past. Leg brushing her knees through the pajamas - fuck almighty, when would this be over? - he walked to the bathroom, where his Joker clothes were still lying in a red heap. She watched as he slipped a hand into a pocket, her arms and legs stiffening once again, how many fucking times, prepared to flee, to fly if need be, right through that open window. “Here.” He straightened up, something small and thin, like a stick, in his hand. He walked back to her and held it out in his palm. Standing before her almost naked, in just his white but green-spattered briefs, he offered it to her like a sacrifice: her pen. Crusty, dirt brown.

She gasped and clutched her chest. The pajama shirt trembled in her fist and whatever she’d eaten earlier roiled around in her stomach and pushed towards the light. “Jeh… _Jesus_…” She stumbled to her feet and ran to the bathroom, knees giving way by the doorstep so she sank into his pile of clothes, one hand scrabbling for the toilet seat while the other one caught in the snarl of cheap red fabric. _Christ_. She pulled herself up with elbows slipping on ice cold porcelain as she retched and whimpered, and a superhuman squeeze of her innards brought up a cascade of bile. Yellow spatters painted the bowl a transient Pollock as she heaved and heaved, and she felt Arthur come up behind her and crouch by her side and shove his mouth into her hair and hiss in her ear, “You felt that crunch before? The guy’s elbow? That _crack_? That’s how it feels. Tell me how it _feels_, Harley!”

She sobbed and screamed at him to stop, but another surge had her hanging over the bowl again, muted and breathless as the vomit poured out of her. When the heaves finally came empty, she slumped against the wall and breathed in teary hiccups, mumbling, “I can’t… I don’t want… please don’t… _please_.”

When she opened her eyes, he was right there in her face, his features skewed in the film of moisture, and he looked _excited_ – whispering, of all things, “You’re being born, Harley. Don’t fight it!”


	5. Mary on a cross

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you choose to run away with me,  
I will tickle you internally  
And I see nothing wrong with that
> 
> ([Ghost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5mX3NkA7jM) \- and can I just say, this is also a red-suited man in face paint who fucks me up)

“So can we drop the pretense now?”

They were sitting in the kitchen (full of knives, of murderous heat) nursing a cup of tea each, and the sun was slicing across the table. Blinding her with white.

She sighed. “Whatever.”

“Clean slate? Bygones? Begin again?” He held out a hand, the bony hand of fate, how the hell had she ended up in this mess? “Hello.”

She took it. “Hello.”

“Arthur Fleck,” he said, squeezing a little, and fuck it was warm.

“Har…” She swallowed. “…ley Quinn?”

There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “If you say so.”

She shrugged.

“Want a cigarette?”

“You know what, I do.” She took the offering and lit it like she’d done nothing else in her life. “See, that wasn’t so hard,” she muttered to herself, a retort aimed at no one, at her super-ego, who knew.

“First major act of defiance,” Arthur said.

Harley smiled. Yeah, it was pathetic, but then all the good stories were. She knocked the ashes into her half-finished tea. “You know, I don’t really care if your tale is true.”

Arthur’s face was impassive. “Really.”

She spread her hands. “It’s like Hamlet. You don’t watch it to find out what happens, do you?”

“Hamlet. That’s the one with the mother, right?”

She laughed, an explosive girlish giggle with a snort. Wow, this was turning into quite the habit, wasn’t it? But she liked the feel of it, and she could sense him lapping it up, feeding on her spontaneous reactions like a starved man. Unless it was an act, but she had a feeling this particular aspect of him wasn’t. That even though half of what came out of his mouth was a convenient lie, there was a hole in him that, amazingly, she seemed to fill.

What would the DS fucking M say about that?

She peered up at him from beneath her lashes, wondering if she dared test the theory. _Action research_, she thought, and it almost made her laugh again. “You know, all those other people? They’re not honor bound to find you funny. It’s not something you’re owed.”

His eyebrows dipped. “There you go again, giv–”

“No, no. I’m just telling you. It’s fucked up, but it’s true. Life isn’t a straightforward narrative where those who work hard battle their way up and are recognized for it.” _You can also be a lazy fuck and use ten percent of what you were born with and get applauded._

“I have good jokes,” Arthur mumbled.

“Dunning-Kruger,” she whispered to herself and let the cigarette drop with a sizzle into her mug.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She sighed again, blinked against the eye-stabby fucking sun. “I need to get some blinds.”

He turned to look at the light that bounced off all the white surfaces. It glinted in his hair, in his eyes. Exposed the paleness of his chest. “I’d break the window for you if I thought it would help.”

Such chivalry. “The glass ceiling…” she murmured, helping herself to another cigarette. Damn, he was rubbing off on her, and she couldn’t be bothered to interrogate it. She became aware of him watching her, all narrowed eyes and questions. Oh, yeah. Glass ceiling. She made a rueful face. “I guess you get dibs on that one. Funny.”

“Funny?”

“Yeah.” She took a drag and held it. “All those _categories_. Those predictors. I used to love them, but what are they really but blinds?”

He glanced at the window again, confused by the looks of it. She smiled. Perhaps she was starting to believe him. Perhaps she was starting to _not_ believe… certain other things.

She winced. That wasn’t true. She still believed order was better than chaos. Yes, there needed to be opposing voices to avoid the status quo cementing into dogma, but there had to be _something_ to adhere to, some kind of rulebook. 

So, what, even the fifties with its fake happiness and a piece of the cake for the lucky few had been better than this, than the eruption of the long downtrodden underclass in the middle of the city? Those pastel-colored times, when the ugliness of human nature had stayed behind domestic lock and key, when they had collectively tended their lawns and pretended it didn’t exist, relegated it to asylums and prisons and taken out their frustrations on wives and servants and strangers in brothels...

With the appearance of Joker, that cover had been blown. Now people didn’t just knife each other in the dark, and even the elite wasn’t safe. Now it was all out in the open.

Glugging back the last of his tea, Arthur got to his feet and put the mug in the sink. With his back towards her, he couldn’t see her tracing the Spinosaurus ridge on his back, couldn't know how her eyes rounded every vertebra and slid along his ribs in an ocular caress. She wished she could touch it, just once, that protruding cage, feel what it was like. How stretched the skin was. If he was ticklish.

Shit, he probably wasn’t, but no one knew. Her stomach clenched as she imagined him tortured with tickles as a kid, shrieking laughter the falsest testament.

Oblivious to both her ogling and her brief attack of empathy, Arthur turned round and leaned against the sink, giving her an opportunity to trace his hip bone down into his red pants. Forcing herself to stop staring, she asked, “So what’s the plan today? Turn yourself in, flee the country? I need to go to work.”

Sudden steel entered his eyes. “No you don’t.”

Oh good. He was back. She’d started to think he was turning docile. “No?”

“No. You’re my trump card.”

“In what way?”

“Well…” He got up and walked to her side of the table, leaned over her with one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the table. “What are you worth? To the university?”

She laughed.

“That wasn’t a joke.”

“Eh… You’d be surprised.”

“If I hold your pen to your throat and parade you out of here, maybe I can get free passage. It worked before.”

She glanced up, gave him an _are you serious_ look, but it didn’t have the intended effect. Instead he cocked his head and held her eyes, and before she knew it the whole thing turned into a Moment. Faltering, she sucked at the cigarette again, but her confidence was waning. She didn’t know where it had come from in the first place. Perhaps it was a chemical thing. Endorphins running haywire after the shock of seeing something of hers covered in dried blood?

But Arthur was having none of her deflections. He lowered his head and touched her ear with the tip of his nose. She shivered, remembering the toilet. “Least I can do is try, right?” came the soft murmur, teasing her hair, heating her skin, making her freeze. “Nothing to lose, remember?”

She put the cigarette to her mouth, unsteady now, unnerved too easily by his nearness. “Are–” She stopped to swallow. “Aren’t you forgetting your manners?”

There was a glitch in time where he didn’t react. Then the space between them grew. "Oh." He squatted at her side, hands still holding the chair and the edge of the table, but jarring remorse on his face. “I’m sorry. Can I sit this close to you?”

She gazed at him, nonplussed at the irony of a murderer asking if he was being too pushy. But even a murderer didn’t kill _everyone_. Even killers had to have a day off. She felt her lashes flutter, it was a nervous tic, but maybe it looked flirty. Pressing her lips together, she chanced a nod. His face turned stony, no, not stony, but sort of _hard_, shit, all her words were abandoning her. What was it, what went through his mind when he raised his hand to her throat? He didn’t have her pen anywhere on him, at least she didn’t think he did, but who could tell with this magician? He might not tell the most mainstream of jokes, but he did possess a certain sleight of hand. His fingertips hovered just shy of her skin, waiting for a level of permission she’d never been asked to give in her life.

“What?” It came out a croak.

His face softened again, but lost none of its intensity. “What do you think?”

Oh Jesus. Another drag of the cigarette, quick, quick, oh Lord where to go from here. “This is so… _bad_,” she managed through lips gone numb. He seemed about to withdraw, and she moaned a protest. “Not that kind of bad, stupid.”

His eyes narrowed, boring into hers, demanding overt assent.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she whined. “No one’s this clueless. Have you never seen dilated pupils before?”

“No,” he murmured, even as his fingers slid over her throat, past her ear, into her hair, far up her scalp. They were rough, marked by the horrors of his trade, and she shivered at the touch. His mouth inched closer to hers, open but not yet brushing, just teasing her lips with his breath. He gripped a clump of her hair and stared her down – what was this, a fucking duel? She stared back, dared the disorientation of that lupine gaze with a winded laugh, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “You think _this_ is funny?”

“Isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he whispered, and something lost and young came into his eyes. Even with his fist in her hair there was something uncertain and aimless about his manner, some weird hesitation she couldn’t place.

“You wouldn’t know?” She raised an eyebrow. “Why? You’re saying you’re a… virgin?”

“Now what else would I be?”

Oh fuck. What else indeed. At least this was the weirdest attempt at seduction she’d ever experienced. A fumbling, clumsy improvisation, but mingled with something so take-charge and confident she might just faint. She didn’t even know who she was almost-kissing – Arthur, Joker? The awkward child or the murdering maniac? The poetic performer or master manipulator? And who the fuck was she turning into that welcomed it?

Someone who wanted to be overpowered just so she could turn it all around, pin them against a wall, and slash their fucking throat.

She shot to her feet. “Whoa, okay, slow down mister. Heh. Hold on a minute. Where the f–” She looked round for her mug, found it exactly where she’d left it on the table, and dropped her second cigarette in the sludge. “Hoo. Well.” She ran a hand through her hair and felt the metal taste of disappointment in her mouth. She’d wanted it, Christ, she still did. Behind her there was still that weird fucking presence, a man who was all body and such an odd one at that, an impossible puzzle, like being turned on by a fucking stick insect, Jesus. If ever the phrase ‘slippery slope’ had a dictionary definition, this right here was it. And she was _not _sliding down that soapy surface today. She hadn’t been lying when she said she had to go to work.

But when she turned to face him, she knew a change of work plans was the least of her worries.


	6. Waking the witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You won't burn (red, red roses)  
You won't bleed (pinks and posies)  
Confess to me, girl (red, red roses, go down)
> 
> ([Kate Bush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7FEneG7gsg))

His expression defied description. There it was, the truth, but what the hell kind of truth was it? There was nothing like this in her books – this mixture of despair and hunger and pure delight. There were tears in his eyes and a maniacal glow. His fangs were bared like those of a dog that was both growling and wagging its tail. Adopting a shrill voice, he said, “I’m not leaving without my face.”

“Uh…”

“Paint me, Harley. If it’s the last thing you do.”

Her ribs felt sawed apart. “I don’t… have any makeup.”

He giggled through closed lips, as if to say _oh ye of little faith_. “But _I do_.” He jerked his head at the jacket that still lay crumpled on the bathroom floor. Oh, he meant she must go get it? And turn her back to him? Hesitating, she searched his face for pointers until he snarled, “Now!”

She dove to the floor and slipped her hand down the pocket – lined with silk, smooth and cool against her hand – and brought up a little box of white, red, and blue, a couple of brushes. All that, in there? Where had he even got it? His footsteps approached behind her, bare feet clinging to tiles. He stood in front of the mirror, irises illuminated by the fluorescent light. He stared at himself for a while, and then his eyes wandered over the silver surface until they found hers: they met through the looking glass. Pulled by a force with no name, she stepped up behind him. Her face in the mirror, pale like moonlight, full of fear. It was disgusting, that fear. So ugly.

“Go on,” he said, and turned his profile to the mirror. Moving in front of him, she maneuvered the brushes and paints without dropping anything. He just stood there waiting, patience personified, or was he filled with rage, who the fuck knew. She dipped a brush in the white, smearing it over the edges of the cup, her hand a mess of quivers. Raising the brush to his face, she dragged it down his forehead in a fearful caress. He was a fraction shorter than her, she realized, but that had no meaning. They were of a height inside, of a strength.

“So, work,” he said conversationally. “You have a lecture, perhaps?”

“Uh…” Her voice wasn’t hers anymore. It was in shreds. “A…” Her nose wrinkled, trembling. “I’m meeting a student. Essay.”

“Good one?”

She hiccupped. “Uh-huh. Ste-stellar.”

He raised a white-streaked eyebrow. “But at least your colleagues are smart. They can challenge you.”

She said nothing, just pushed the brush into the white again and swirled it around, the goo a welcome focal point. She had to hold onto something.

“I mean, the university must be the perfect place for someone like you,” Arthur – Joker – went on. “All that intellectual stimulation. All those interesting debates. Philosophy in action.”

The tremble by her nose spread to her mouth, her chin. Goddammit. “I like my colleagues.” She nodded to underscore the truth of it.

His eyes twinkled. “I’m sure.”

“We just… we do different things.”

Arthur closed his eyes to let her paint his lids. Gentle, sweeping motions, but precarious with her still-shaky fingers. She could push the brush right through his eye and he knew it. Was he beginning to trust her after all? _Ooooh no Harley, that way madness lies. None of this is what it seems. You’re just playing his game to get out alive, remember? _But the brush was making such beautiful twirls on his skin, pulling it along, crinkling the edges of his eyelids and making his lashes dance in slow motion waves. She wouldn’t want to ruin that.

“So, your colleagues. What’s their thing, experiments?”

She let out a shuddering breath. “Mostly.”

“You don’t approve?”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “Sure I do.” She nudged more white into the edges of his hair. Wanted to continue up his scalp, shear all those curls from his skin. Rake the ruined beauty from this monster who didn’t deserve it. “I just have… a different perspective.”

He blinked a few times, tiny clumps of white in his lashes. “Because you’re interested in real life, right?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“And yet you do interviews.”

She paused to look at him. “Well, I can’t very well do observations, now can I?”

A minute pause, the timing of an award-winning actor. “You can’t?”

A sucking _wheee_ in her chest, like freefall, like a rollercoaster heading straight down the jaws of hell.

“Hey, have you heard this one?” he asked, childish eagerness creeping in again. “‘Carefully selected test persons, in a carefully controlled situation, and carefully controlled circumstances, will do–’”

She closed her eyes and whispered along with him, “… whatever the fuck they please.”

A moment’s vacuum, and then she reopened her eyes. The bathroom light was bright, so white.

“You tell jokes like that at work?” He smirked, and her teeth clenched so hard they would crack.

“It’s… complicated,” she forced out.

“But it must be so _rewarding_. To do different things but pull in the same direction. To look at phenomena from different angles, and together you piece together the whole picture. Everyone doing their bit, everyone a cog in the great machinery.”

She changed brushes and ground the new one into the cake of red. “Yeah…” A mere whisper.

“They must be really happy to have _you_ if the rest of them only do controlled experiments. You know, the dissenting voice that makes the group’s decisions more… tempered?”

She felt weariness fill her. How the hell did a layman know about things like that? “Read a lot of publications, do you?”

“Oh, I’m a natural,” he said. Quick like an adder, he dipped his fingers in the red, crushed the grease in his fist, and smeared it over her face – too quickly for her to recoil. 

_That’s how quickly he could kill me_. Ribs expanding to make room for whatever was stirring in there, she slapped the brush over his face: a red streak slashed across his cheek. 

His eyes shone with a wicked light. “Come on, then. Hit me.”

A second’s hesitation. Then she rolled her eyes. “Are you crazy?”

“Hahahahahahahahaha.”

She couldn’t help it, she joined in. Wanted to say stop, no actually she didn’t want that, she wanted this to go on forever, this exhilarating mix of lust and death, this danse macabre. “I know what you’re doing,” she said, but a tendril of something scathing and sweet seeped through her veins at the thought of getting… physical.

“Sorry to be predictable,” he taunted. “I know you hate that.”

Muscles yanked by some invisible thread, she shoved him – a strange move, a kind of pulled punch that only drew him towards her. She shoved him again, and he ended up even closer, his mocking sneer filling her entire field of vision. 

“Come _ooon_,” he urged. “If you don’t, I’ll have to bring out my knife.”

She shook her head. “What fucking knife?”

“This one.” A blade whipped out between them and she gasped, wanted to take a step back but his other hand was on the small of her back, gently holding her to him. A look of fake concern as he said, “Oh, and as always, I hope this isn’t too… forward of me.” The edge of the knife grazed her jaw, scraped a tickly path like a cello flageolet over her skin, light enough to leave it intact and hard enough to send goosebumps down her arm.

“I’m not into knife play,” she whispered.

“How would you know?”

“Hm,” she almost-chuckled. “I prefer a bat, you know that.”

His eyes narrowed. “Bat…”

“Baseball.” She made an ironic grimace. “All-American girl here.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Well, everybody plays the fool.”

His face lit up behind the paint. “How right you are.”

The knife wandered up her face, stopped just shy of her eye. If her heart was beating, it was in another universe.

“How much stuff can you hide in those clothes of yours?” she asked.

He leered. “Perks of being a stick figure. Lots of room.”

She looked down at the tip of the knife, so close to switching the light off forever. Ah, but this was it. She was completely subdued. At his mercy. No way out, backed into a corner with only her wits to guide her. If only her wits weren't clouded by that scarlet mist...

“Finishing touch?” Another flip of the hand, and he had a small bottle of green between his fingers. Because of course he did.

Hand trembling, she took the bottle, the weight of fate itself in her palm. “Is it safe?” she asked sarcastically.

“Just don’t get any in your eyes.”

“In _my_ eyes?”

He smiled. Then he bowed over the washbasin, gripped it with the knife still in his hand, ragged hair hanging, the mountain ridge of his spine protruding. She opened the bottle and squeezed it, massaged the liquid into his head, mushing his hair, pulling at his tresses harder and harder. The green stained her fingers, she was part of this creation and it ached in her, the need to be a part of something, to _believe_ in something, to stop chasing possibilities and see the world anew. She pushed his head down the washbasin, kneading him like dough, ripping a few strands, scraping his scalp with her nails. But when she tried to yank a whole clump out, he whirled round, knife hand raised. Seeming to notice the weapon for the first time, he made an _oops_ face and tossed it in the washbasin, shrugging comically.

"You're such an idiot."

He grinned, taking the endearment exactly for what it was. And then she hit him. Just a loose smack on the shoulder, the twisted one, hardly touching him. Just a weak little slap, she’d never done this before, come on. One corner of his mouth quirked, and then he slapped her back – a feather-light touch on her cheek. It made something rise in her, a fountain of lava, and she slapped him again, hard this time. A moment of nothing, of clocks stopping – then he started striking at her with both hands, and she parried and struck back, like a handclapping game – _say, say, oh playmate, climb up my poison tree_ – a flurry of ridiculous, ineffectual slaps, like children arguing over a toy, but the toy was the two of them together, the things they could make and destroy. Pulled this way and that, the barbie they both wanted until it was ripped in two and he ended up with the body and her with the head.

In the midst of the slapping, he snaked his arms around her and held her against him. She battled for space in his grip, tried to wrench pieces of flesh from him but slipped on the bones, there was nothing to hold onto. Him breathless and grinning, goading her on, green rivulets gouging a way through the white cake of makeup, dotting his cheeks like acid rain. She wrestled him to the floor – he let her do it – and rolled on top of him, ramming her underarm against his throat. He gasped for breath, a raspy, gurgly sound that made her mad. She found the button in his pants and ripped it off, tore at the fabric until the zipper broke.

“You going to pay for that?” he wheezed, and then heaved himself up and forced her onto her back, her head almost hitting the wall. He stared down at her, hair hanging in gloopy strands, dripping green, oh fuck, she pushed her hips up to make room and rolled over on her stomach, not the best course of action she knew, you were helpless on your stomach but that _green_. Better make him take her from behind than be blinded with poison.

“Do it,” she panted.

“No.”

_What?_

“I don’t do that. Too messy.”

She realized she was throbbing, and he was going to deny her this? She was about to scream when she felt urgent fingers come up her thigh, clumsy and raw, slipping between her legs, finding their way into slipperiness. His weight on her, his hand between them, his panting in her ear. A nail scratched her, hell, there was too much urgency and greed, he slipped in it and missed, but he wormed his way back and put his fingers right into her, just rammed the gate like a getaway car. _God_, she mouthed, but there was no god and no angels, no ultimate reward, just this. Just bony fingers jabbing into hungry flesh, a rhythm that didn’t make sense, it stoked her need without giving anything, he was doing it all weird, a rookie without a clue. She squirmed beneath him, trying to guide the thrusts, and now and again he hit the right spot, no _she_ did, she had to lead this orchestra or the crescendo would never come. He was always just out of reach, always the wrong side of her, missing the places that mattered and hitting them once the need had shifted.

It was the most unsatisfying fuck she’d ever had.

“I’m sorry I’m doing it wrong,” he whispered in her ear, but he wasn’t fucking sorry, he was in his fucking element. The king of cats, playing with his prey. Claws half withdrawn to string out the torture. Green slitted eyes transfixed by the spectacle.

But then suddenly everything was right. Suddenly his fingers were rainbows, amp, amp, amping it up, finding all her secrets, teasing her with horrible understanding, with the illusion of touching minds. He pretended to know her, but in order to pretend he had to _actually_ know her. For a few beautiful moments, they were on a level, on a wavelength. He was the answer to her prayers and the ultimate rejection, the joke on the tip of her tongue but the punchline forgotten.

And just as it was about to happen, he pulled his fingers out.

“Oh fuh…”

A hiss into her hair: “Tell me why you hate the world. What reason could you possibly have?”

The answer came rushing in a geyser of forbidden rage. “Because nobody thinks like me!”


	7. The anarchist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In all your science of the mind  
Seeking blind through flesh and bone  
Find the blood inside this stone
> 
> ([Rush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on3lLcAz4YU))

“So angry.” He watched her sit there, slumped against the bathroom wall, a skewed reflection of earlier. She was beginning to feel quite at home against the cold tiles. “So sentimental.”

Her nostril quivered, but it was just a tiny aftershock. “Yes. I was born angry.” The other thing… she didn’t really want to touch.

He nodded down at his folded legs, elbows on his knees. The last few drops of green plopped onto the floor as his fingers waved the beat to some internal music. Fingers he hadn’t washed yet, they were full of her.

“You sure you don’t want…” She glanced down at his crotch and immediately regretted it. Offering some kind of reward, retaliation, whatever... it felt too normal.

“I’m fine. Pills, you know.”

“Oh.”

Silence descended, perhaps for the first time since they met. It lingered and stretched, and it felt kind of relaxing. She was sinking into a new chapter in her life, and it was allowed to take its time. But it also made her a bit antsy. This was a crossroads, a stalemate of sorts. She was sitting here on the other side of a burned bridge, and the path in front of her was anything but clear. She’d chosen. She’d let this madman inside her, let him infect her thinking, and her possible choices were drastically reduced. What now? Did she ride with him into a bleeding sunset and strike terror in the hearts of Gotham residents with her bat? That was just silly. She wasn’t a killer, just angry.

Just so fucking angry.

She sighed, and he peered up from beneath his hair. It was hard to read his face when it was painted, to separate his features from those other lines. Such a beautiful disguise it made her jealous. Behind that clumsy mask, he could be anyone. She'd washed off the red he'd smeared in her face earlier, but now she almost missed it.

He slapped his palms on his knees. “Well, this has all been very nice, but I really have to get going.”

She watched him get up, a small panic in her chest. He was leaving? And her already addicted. Such a cliché. As if sensing her silent plea, he stopped and half turned towards her, red pants hanging off hipbones, Christ it was beyond ridiculous. Seeing her look, he gave a self-satisfied grin and raised a quick eyebrow that sent her hormones on a rampage. He sighed blissfully. “My, but you were an easy one.”

She glared up at him, and he held out a hand. She was _not_ going to take it. So he was leaving, fine. She wasn’t some romantic girl who needed vows and promises. But his hand remained offered, the elegant lines of it outstretched in supplication. The hand of fucking fate. 

Oh f… 

She took it, and he pulled her up so they stood face to face. “Don’t worry, Harley,” he drawled with the voice he’d first greeted her with last night, all softness and menace. “I’m going to make use of you. Why do you think I went to all this trouble?”

At once, she felt the cold tendrils of doubt. He was too eager now, like a spider scuttling across the strands to its latest catch. “Because you needed somewhere to sleep,” she muttered.

Something hard came over his face, and a switch in her head flipped, sending two opposing forces to war inside her chest. She had to get away now, before she was too drawn in, _no_, she needed to tie him to her forever with chains of steel. She wanted this, wanted to be hung up on him - she just wasn’t sure she wanted him to want it too. _Oh crap. Classic wanting what you can’t get, is that your best effort? _What if he became clingy? Hell, he was already clingy, sliding his hands over her hips and trying to goad her into a slow kind of undulating movement. She shook her head and took a step away, but he grabbed the fabric of her shirt. 

“Don’t abandon me now, Harley. You’re not going to abandon me, are you? You know what happens to people who abandon me?”

She held her breath.

“You know, I meant what I said about the observations. You want to study me? Go ahead and study me. I don’t mind.”

“Because you love the attention.”

He shrugged. “So?”

“Alright, I’ll have a new consent form drawn up for you.” At least she would be getting something out of it. Sacrifice for her art and all that. Giving it all for science.

Leaning in close, he hissed, “Just make sure you can keep up.” 

His cackle made her freeze and burn. She wanted this, she didn’t. It was all she had, but what if she didn’t need anything? She could live with a life that gave her nothing and be satisfied. In a way that would be easier. She’d had so much practice. She could shuffle along her department corridor for the rest of her working life and gather dust on her socks and it would be fine. She could publish once a year, some drivel that confirmed someone else’s findings, didn’t even have to be unique. What were her crazy theories worth anyway, when nothing ever changed however much she screamed into a scholarly void that all the things in this world that didn’t make sense... somehow they did make sense after all. You just had to accept a wider definition of human.

“Aw, I think someone needs a bit of a boost.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know. I was fine for a long, long time. I know what it’s like.”

_I don’t want you to know what it’s like_. _I want you to leave me alone_.

He pressed something into her palm. The box of makeup. A symbolic sealing, was that it? She grimaced. “I never wear makeup. Can’t be bothered to wipe it off at night.”

“So don’t.”

She felt weak. He wanted her to never take her face off again? It was tempting, it was, but it was also terrifying. As if the decision before her, to paint her lips, was the most momentous one in her life.

“It’s just a splash of color in a drab, grey world,” he sing-songed, and she remembered the pools of red they’d washed off the subway stairs. She raised her eyes to his, hoped against stupid hope to find some kind of comfort there, some respite from the very man she was reaching out to. She had no one. Only him. This was why people had friends, why they kept in touch with their families: it made them less vulnerable, less susceptible to dangerous illusions. They could have the fairy dust blown in their eyes and not go under without a fight. They could ask someone else for a second opinion.

Nodding weakly, she raised her chin and waited. She'd painted him, now it was his turn. Let him leave his mark on her if that's what he wanted. 

It was. She saw it in his face. He couldn't hide his glee, not even behind his own makeup, as he took back the box and dipped a brush in the red. She'd meant to say it, _Just the red_, but he already knew. He knew everything about her, it was what she feared and wanted. Someone who anticipated her every move but was himself entirely unpredictable. Who could take the morsels she dropped and give her back a full meal. 

The brush tickled her lips with its cool caress. He stroked it back and forth, much longer than necessary, and she just stood there and received it like communion. She felt it wobble outside the lines, clumsy and hideous, distorting her face with its uneven contours, but who gave a shit? She looked like a weirdo anyway, always did. Couldn’t enter a room without heads turning and eyes averting. Like someone deformed.

“Harley…” Once again his hands on her, the slow, rolling movement that wanted her to play along. And fuck, she’d already had him fingerfuck her, what was another step? _Someday I want to dance with you_. Well, here they were, not twenty-four hours later, not even twelve. Her hips started moving, rising and falling like a tide under his guidance. They were rocking together like the sea, they were one. _I don’t want to be one with you_. But her brain chemicals didn’t care. She’d been starving for too long, it was silly to expect she would resist if someone made her favorite dish, the guilty-pleasure sugar-and-fat opulence you only ate in secret.

Giving her a kiss on the forehead, he whispered, “Have a good day at work.”

“I will.”

She was about to move away when he caught her arm and winked. “Knock ’em dead.”

***

It was two in the afternoon when she got off at her stop, and she still hadn’t slept since yesterday. It was beginning to take its toll. Reality felt pieced together, jagged. People moved jerkily, things happened too quickly or too slowly. The subway rattled and screeched, the headlines in the newspaper stand roared their warning: _maniac on the loose_.

Yes, she _felt_ loose. Torn from her moorings, she was liquid poured into a pair of stockings and a skirt. Everything that had tied her to something else retreating fast, along with a distant shoreline.

The department door – just the usual door, nothing changed about it, but it was lighter somehow, easier to heave open. The administrator looked up for once, blank face, perhaps thrown by the ugly lipstick. Harley gave her a wave and walked on in slow motion to an internal soundtrack that swelled and sank in ever higher waves. Fiona passed her, a frown and a turn of the head, and Harley ignored her.

“Harleen! Have you heard?”

She twirled around and walked backwards, yelling, “Sorry, can’t hear you!”

By the door to her office there was a student, she should remember his name but he was a nobody, stepping on his own feet. “I was wondering how to get an A on this,” he said without preambles. “Can I rewrite it?”

She took the pile of papers, saw her fingers tinged with green, the ripped skin still under her nails. “You know, I don’t think you can.” She dropped the sheets and they fluttered all over the corridor as she stuck her key in the lock.

“Oh…” He frowned. “But–”

“How about you accept your lot in life, honey?”

“My… _lot_?”

She cocked her head. “Why is everyone such an idiot?” She pushed the door open and went inside.

The student lingered, looking shocked. “I think… I think I’ll need to take this up with the dean or something.”

She shrugged and sat, leaning back with her boots on the desk. “Gotta do what you gotta do.” She shook out a cigarette from the packet Joker had so kindly left her and lit it. She was warming to the taste and no mistake. She wouldn’t live forever, so the rest of it didn’t really matter. She checked her watch, the doomsday clock, but she still had time to spare, Jesus, how to kill it? She looked at the student who was still hovering, hovering, her smile turning crooked. How many of them had she wanted to knife?

_But what crime has the poor boy committed?_ Joker’s hand puppet asked in its squeaky voice.

_Being fucking stupid. Next?_

The student stared at her boots like a wilting ingenue, she wanted to fucking kick him. He was one of those hothouse flowers who thought the things they read in the papers happened on another planet, who were fucking _surprised_ when they encountered evil.

“Look,” she spoke through the cigarette between her lips, “I need to do some background research before tonight, so if you’d kindly fuck off.” She stood and reached for a book on her shelf, a big fat one with all the big names. Well, fuck them. They’d have to make a new edition when she was done with her new study. She balanced it on her arm and started leafing. At the corner of her eye, she saw the student shift his weight. She gave him a look, would have been above the rim of her glasses if she’d possessed a pair. “Yes?”

“Oh…” He slunk away and she heaved a theatrical sigh. Scanning the page where she’d opened the book, she dropped it on the floor. She really had no interest in the thoughts of these old stiffs. What she really needed was her tape recorder. Opening her bag, she stuffed it in beside the baseball bat. For the first time in her professional life, she felt the pull of something stronger than lethargy, than people-pleasing. This was what she wanted to do. No more transcription, no more coding. Just intuition running wild. Just observational skills put to some real fucking use. And no writing for journals either, spending all her time tweaking references to suit their specifications – seriously, who was the real madman here?

On a whim, she pulled out her baseball bat and smashed it into the computer. Boohoo, destroying department property. Yeah, well, it was cheaper than paying wages to someone who spent precious tax dollars changing initials to full names and then back again, switching commas for full stops, and moving the publishing year around from Vancouver style to APA.

She was done with this shit. At last she would be a researcher for real.

“Doctor Quinzel?”  
  
Of for f... What now?  
  
Two police officers in the doorway, because of course there were. “We need to talk to you.”  
  
Perfect. A ride downtown.  
  
She smiled and let them escort her down the stairs into a waiting car. Backseat flower, she glided through the city like a ghost. Everything was unnaturally calm in the afternoon sun. Nobody about, nothing happening. She gazed out of the window at the passing buildings, and it was like a movie set before the actors arrived. A pre-blitz idyll, as if this would all be in ruins come twilight.  
  
_No, that was then. This is now_.  
  
“We believe Joker has been in contact with you.”  
  
_No shit_.  
  
They gave her a coffee and allowed her to smoke during the grilling.  
  
_Are you alright, ma’am? Yada yada yada. _Torn clothes and scratch marks, _No, I’m not. No idea where he went after he assaulted me_. She let fly the occasional sob. _He came to my flat! I didn’t know what to do, if I dared call the police…_ A disconnected story, she knew what eyewitnesses were like, how unreliable, how confused. It tumbled out of her like a jagged avalanche, they wouldn’t be able to pick anything out of the rubble. They gave her a card, _Call us_ _if you think of something_ and _Thank you for your cooperation_. Like the grades handed out at the end of life: _thank you for your cooperation_. In what, exactly? This absurdist play with no proper ending, just a curtain when the author ran out of ideas?  
  
Outside the station, journalists had flocked. Sadists with pens, just like her. Drawing their portrait of the world, as relevant and correct and deranged as anyone else’s.  
  
Just another voice.  
  
“Doctor Quinzel, did Joker assault you?”  
  
_With his logic, yes. I’ll never recover_.  
  
She hated them. Hated them all. _You wouldn’t think it, would you, seeing my calm exterior, feeling my firm handshake. You’d never guess, knocked out by my smile and my polite questions_. She played the part, she did. She was a representative for her kind, every hour of every day. She was kindness herself, kindness as in ‘hasn’t killed you yet’. Applaud!  
  
She breathed in: deep, greedy gulps. Her air. Hers.  
  
Forcing her ears closed to the chatter around her, she fought down repulsion. These people were… she closed her eyes briefly. They were what madethis world. Humans didn’t survive without each other. But the way they _swarmed_. Like insects, or homeless dogs, breeding and multiplying in the shadows.  
  
She wanted to hit herself. Be nice. Not feral. _Nice_.  
  
So she answered their questions with magnanimity, even the one about young Wayne, what was it he’d said earlier? “Indirectly I hold Joker responsible for my parents’ death.” _Doctor Quinzel, as a psychologist, what do you say about that?_  
  
_I’ll say whatever you need me to say so you’ll let me go to him_, and she played her part until the explosion from the hospital cut the performance short. She’d wanted to be there to see it, document every second, but now it was too late.  
  
At least it sent the reporters scuttling.


	8. Fugazi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where are the prophets  
Where are the visionaries  
Where are the poets  
To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary?
> 
> ([Marillion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6XsqBgFQ70))

When she arrived, smoke was billowing from the foundations of the hospital. An alarm was ringing – a hundred alarms, had he started them himself to give the inmates a chance to escape? People on the sidewalk, in the street, coughing or sobbing. Firemen bombarded windows with water, but they didn’t dive into the flames to rescue anyone. Perhaps there was no need. Only one person was still in there, and no one wanted him to survive.

Except maybe her. _Is that my fate, my lot in life? To accept what can’t be accepted?_

_Or should I turn and run while I can?_

She caught the arm of a man in a white coat. “What’s happened?”

“The archives,” he called over his shoulder as he hurried off down the street. 

She watched him go. There was something odd about his manner, as if…

She recoiled as a cloud of smoke blew in her face. _Archives_… Boxes of journals, binders in offices, telling a story of the people inside. Yet another layer of truths and lies, of theories made stone. One voice drowning out another – but now it was gone. Patients and professionals indistinguishable now. The evidence destroyed, history erased. That’s what he’d done: set them free, set them adrift. Half would perish, like caged animals on the freeway, no functions left after years in an institution. Nothing but their current traits and talents to save them.

She imagined it for herself: her CV gone. All her doctor’s appointments, her diploma, her receipts. Who would she be? It was the perfect crime – to rob people of their past – but it was also the perfect gift. To start from scratch. He’d given them all a clean slate, himself too. An atom torn from a molecule, an orphan, a Kaspar Hauser. The only surviving portrait her tape with his voice. The only path forward, the story she would tell.

_Who are you today?_ That’s what he was asking.

Only it wasn’t true. History was etched into cells, stored in neurons. No one could escape the grooves in their brain.

Just then, he emerged from the building like a mirage - a picture of calm against the flames. Power seemed to surge through his body for each step. Confidence, that damned aphrodisiac, she wasn't immune, and coupled with vulnerability, well, obviously she was done for and all her knowledge be damned. She took a step in his direction - wanted him to see her in the crowd, be special, be someone else. All around her a sea of faces, _it’s happening again_, but she was too dazed to fully grasp the déjà vu. The world was ripping apart at the seams, but the people closest to Joker fell back as he moved through the throng, and a hush descended around him. He was walking openly through the crush of people, exposing his skin and his hair and his face for all to see. He wasn’t hiding, his body was bare to the elements, but no one touched him and he touched no one.

He was walking to her.

_Teeeextboooook, Harley._

_Yeah well, I don’t give a fuck_. She’d rather live in a diagnosis than face one more day of her old life.

And at once something shifted around her. They _saw_ her, all these people. They looked where he looked – but they didn’t see what he saw. To his adoring pack of strays, she was the face of the oppressors. They’d seen her on TV, heard her pander to the official story. _Her_ past wasn’t erased, it was stored on video tape and seared into the minds of watchers. Only the nobodies got a second chance.

There was a ripple of movement as a few of them lunged. She could see it in slow motion, the way the angriest, most desperate ones hurled themselves at her. She could see their life’s history flashing before her eyes. The romantic notions of their youth disintegrated in the fires of reality. The ways of their parents destroyed and belittled. The tiny treasure they’d scraped together on this plot of land, the one place they could call their own, and it had blown up in their faces. She wanted to say that everything she wanted, _really_ wanted, had blown up too, but what did that matter to them? She was a different kind, invading their space, taking up room. Devouring their food, waving bills around to get service. Dressing like she owned the place.

_I’m the enemy_.

Another explosion. Everyone cowered for a moment, eyes white like frightened horses, and she forgave them. She forgave them all. They acted on instinct, just like she’d done her whole life. They followed their hearts, that bumbling child who took over once their brains were out cold. It was what had made her come here in the first place. She’d followed her heart, and look where it had led her. To her death. First to love, and then to death.

Then again, what else could anyone hope for?

Rough hands grabbed her. A woman shrieked. Black smoke billowed skywards. A rumble from the building crumbled her bones. She went limp, only surviving instinct to play dead, because this was it. Her dream of belonging ended here. She’d slammed the door on her old life, but these people wouldn’t take her into theirs the way they had with Joker. He came from their midst. She was a tourist, the visiting scientist. She’d written some of those journals that were burning. Her scribbles were ashes, rising to heaven.

His face, suddenly: a familiar white and red in front of her as the throng around them seethed. “Come on!”

_Titanic_, flitted through her mind, but her feet moved. Someone tugged at her clothes from behind, trying to hold her back, but the ruckus turned mute like a twenties movie. People moving jerkily, erratically. Drama reduced to a single black placard with the word _Help!_ in a frame of swirls. People still grabbed at her, but she stayed safely locked in Joker’s embrace.

His _embrace_. A hard grip in the middle of chaos, but still.

And soon they were running, running, trying to outrun death itself. Clawing their way away from peopled streets, from anything resembling home because it gaped with jaws like hell. She ran towards nothingness and living underground, sailing away on an upwind of Joker’s making. When she looked over her shoulder, the hospital sputtered red hot sparks, and then it was obscured by smoke.

The research she’d been trying to do. She’d got it all wrong. She’d had all the data, but she hadn’t understood the scope of it. Had narrowed it down into bite-sized chunks like the good little researcher she was. Filing the world into shape, a shape that fitted claustrophobic aims and the 6000 word limit of journals. She’d been looking for rhythms, pretending that music wasn’t harmonies and melody too. She’d willingly lobotomized herself, because that was how it worked. You couldn’t see the whole world at a glance. You’d go mad.

The streets were empty now, and Joker turned a corner into an alley. She stumbled, tired, so so tired, and caught herself on a rough wall, tried to catch her breath too. Soon they’d be out of harm’s way, soon…

The cry came unexpected. His voice, the voice of a child, of a wounded bird. _Arthur_, she mouthed. There was scuffling, grunts, a struggle. Starting after him, rounding the corner, she came upon the scene with her heart in a thresher. A man, a disguise, her mind couldn’t process it. Joker was on the ground, writhing uselessly against the strong hold. His mouth was open in a silent scream, just tiny bursts of retching reminiscent of his laughter. Hands around his throat, strangling him – a figure with a mask – and something flapping, she couldn’t see.

The world turned black and white. She could see her hands moving, see her bag swing into view. She ripped it open, grabbed the baseball bat and threw the bag behind her. She didn’t feel it, she was numb. She wasn’t aware of muscles tensing, just saw the man grow larger in her field of vision until he looked up and saw her–

In her mind it was graceful, the way her arms swung. Better this time than back in her flat: her nerves remembered, they perfected the job. The bat skirted a shoulder and glanced off his head, a mild blow, but it sent him staggering against the wall. The bat almost slipped out of her grasp, but she raised her arms and aimed again. Time slowed down as if to let her savor it. To feel the bone and tissue giving way, sweetly shocking her arms like the whisper of death.

“No!”

She stopped, bat still raised above her head. The masked man was groaning and clutching his head, trying to find his feet, but sliding down the wall in boneless frailty. Adrenaline seeped out of her, through the soles of her feet and into the ground beneath her. Color crept back into the world, sound into her ears. There was a light breeze. There were distant sirens. The asphalt at her feet was still dry.

And Joker was holding up a hand towards her. “Stop,” he whispered.

She dropped to her knees, jaws locked in teeth-cracking fear. Her hands hovered over him. “Are you…?”

“I’m fine,” he said, and she remembered how he’d used that word before. “I just… I need to _know_…” Swallowing and gasping, he crawled towards the rumpled man by the wall. His arms came up to protect him against blows, but they couldn’t parry Joker’s fingers. In a second, he’d pried the mask off.

The world ground to a halt. The face that looked up at them was heart-breakingly young, and yet hard like it had seen a thousand wars.

Only Harley could see what happened beneath the makeup. “You,” Joker said softly.

Wayne made to cover his face and then thought better of it. With a groan, he sat up. “You going to kill me?”

Joker just stared at him.

“No?” Wayne chuckled wearily. “Honor among murderers? What a concept.”

Still Joker said nothing.

Wayne wiped his nose and collapsed in a sigh, closing his eyes. “Well, that makes two of us.”

Joker scoffed, but the movement made him wince and clutch his throat. “Meaning, you weren’t going to kill me?” he got out.

“You can live,” Wayne mumbled. “You just can’t sit at my table.”

Joker nodded slowly. “And there it is.” Harley thought she’d never heard him speak with more sincerity, more… sadness. “Don't you know we’re brothers?”

Wayne shook his head. “Still nursing that old delusion?”

Joker’s jaws clenched. “So you do recognize me.” His lips quivered. “Or so you think. But you don’t know who I am. You’ll _never_ know who I am, because you don’t want to know.”

“You’re crazy, that’s all I need to know.”

"Brothers," Joker repeated, barely audible, but Harley stiffened. Wayne’s face was overlaid with countless colleagues and students, the kind who said you didn’t understand because _they _didn’t understand. Because when you saw something they didn’t, the safe thing was to deny its existence flat out.

Her rage wasn’t red, it was ice cold. Gathered for years, honed into weapons. It was time to stop turning those lethal shards on herself. “You want to, what, defeat him? Catch the criminal, turn him in, get a reward? And you had no idea he could have a partner. That anyone could want to defend him.” 

Wayne frowned, as if wondering what she had to do with anything. 

“Don’t you know that to defeat someone, you have to know them?” She laughed mirthlessly. ”You need to find their reflection in yourself. Otherwise you’re just chasing shadows in a house of mirrors.”

Wayne muttered, “I’m not his _fucking brother_.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Because he killed a few people? One man can only do so much harm. You, on the other hand… you have major impact. Like an atom bomb compared to a gun. Weren’t you the one who talked about indirect responsibility earlier today?”

Wayne glared up at her. _He's only eighteen. What can he know?_ But age had nothing to do with it. His blinders weren't off yet, and maybe they never would be. They were welded on by years of people telling him he was right. That his bird's-eye view of the world was the only one possible. 

“It takes a sick kind of person to stick a pen in someone’s eye,” he spat.

“It does,” she said. “But impersonal decisions have consequences too. You may not be there to see it, or feel the blood run, but on a cosmic level you may be stabbing hundreds, thousands. So what’s worse? A man killing a man, and yes, perhaps enjoying it, or a man killing generations without even noticing? You want to punish the feeling or the actual deed?”

Wayne’s face was stone, but his reply was rehearsed and perfect. “The feeling _is _the deed.”

Her last shred of belief in anything disintegrated in a weary sneer. She held out her hand for Joker to take. When he did, she pulled him to his feet. As they stood face to face - this pose they'd end up in time and time again, a dance as old as the world - she smiled. "You get it? When Bruce Wayne does it, that means it’s not illegal.”


	9. Shine on you crazy diamond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Come on you target for faraway laughter  
Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine
> 
> ([Pink Floyd](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWGE9Gi0bB0))

They managed to cover two blocks before the laughter broke out. Harley was surprised it waited that long, but when it came, it came with a vengeance. He laughed until he threw up right there in the gutter, and she stood by, watching the street for any pursuers.

“_Fuck_.”

Still doubled over, he held his palms to his forehead and wheezed. It was interesting, she noted coolly. Just an hour ago, he’d stepped out of a burning building, and he’d been in his element. But three minutes’ conversation with a pampered teenager in vigilante gear had him in fucking stitches. There was so much to learn about this man.

“You know…” she began when he’d calmed down. “That thing he said, it sounded like a real hang-up. What do you think he mean–”

“Don’t talk to me about Wayne!” The cry echoed down the street. She fell quiet, in fact the whole block did. No birds, no wind, nothing. Just laughter looming again, and Joker moaning quietly and rubbing his temples. “Talk about something else.”

“Like…?”

“Tell me something… funny.”

Harley made a face. Funny. She wasn’t a good storyteller, but Joker was hanging with his head over the still-fresh puddle of vomit and perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps nothing mattered. “When I was a little girl, I mutilated my dolls.”

He blinked. He was still leaning forward, catching his breath, but he blinked, a sign that she’d pierced the mist. “What?”

“I hated them.” She sat on the ground and folded her legs, took out her hand-me-down packet of cigarettes and offered one without looking at him. When he shook his head, she took one for herself. Lighting it, she went on, “But my grandparents insisted on giving them to me each year for my birthday. Used to drive me mad. I used a–” She stopped to let out a sudden laugh. She hadn’t thought about it before. “You’re not going to believe this, but I actually stabbed their eyes out with a ballpoint pen.”

He stared at her.

“And drew all over their bodies, like, just angry, hard lines all over them. Like a punishment. I tried to _cut_ them with the pen. Cut them open, pierce them. And I pulled off their arms and legs and left them out in the garden during the winter, so they snowed over and froze to death.”

“Because…”

She shrugged theatrically. “They looked stupid.”

He straightened up, but continued watching her. “You’re making this up.”

“Why would I make it up?”

“A _pen_. Harley…”

“It was a fucking pen! Don’t you think I wish it wasn’t? My teddy bears, on the other hand…”

“You strangled them.”

She laughed. “No. I cared for them religiously.”

“Because they weren’t stupid.”

“Right. They were cute.”

She felt a ton lighter, almost giddy. To tell someone this and have them _understand_… Well, maybe not understand, exactly. But he couldn’t very well judge her for it. Maybe this was the tidbit she should have offered to make him talk the first time they met – yesterday, a world ago.

Then again, she would have wondered forever if he got the idea for his escape from her.

A moment passed, and then Joker sat down beside her, folding his legs too. “You said… you hated the world because nobody thinks like you.”

“Yes.”

“But is that really true?”

“What do you mean, is it true? Why would I lie?”

He frowned at the ground. Around them, dusk was gathering in violet pools, night chill seeping in. “Maybe you’re not lying. Maybe you believe yourself. But I mean… _I_ don’t think like you, and you don’t hate me.”

Her head swam. _You don’t hate me_. She felt like she was being proposed to. Hand unsteady, she brought the cigarette up to her mouth again. Her ass was starting to smart from the asphalt cold, but she didn’t dare break the moment by standing up. They were getting somewhere, weren’t they? He was mirroring her body language, for God’s sake.

A trick he could very well have picked up from some psychologist. _Don’t read into it_.

“I _feel_ like you, though,” he said, and she started wondering if she was still tied to the planet, because she was seriously starting to float inside. “For entirely different reasons, but still.”

She glared at him. “Your point?”

His gaze was lupine, but not mocking. Not even dangerous, just intense. “Maybe you hate the world because you think no one feels like you.”

She swallowed. “Feel, hah.” She shook her head with a strained smile. “I don’t _feel_ things.” It came out much too heated. “I mean, apart from, you know. When you gave me some of that sweet loving.” She raised a sarcastic eyebrow at him. “But just because I happen to be the female of the species doesn’t mean I revel in my feelings all the fucking time, alright? I like a good puzzle. I want to use my brain.”

“Feelings reside in the brain,” Joker said softly – the softness of someone who didn’t have to use a fraction of their strength to win.

_Fuck fuck fuck_.

“Look, you’re way off the mark, okay? When I do follow my… ugh, _heart_, like people say you should – you know, apparently it’s the best thing since sliced bread, following your fucking heart, right? Well, when I do that, I end up…” She spread her hands. “Outside. Of everything. Because what I feel is nothing like what other people–”

_Oh crap_.

The corner of his mouth hitched up. She was an open book to this man. _Abort, abort_. But she didn’t leave, didn’t even move, just sat there and panicked as he drawled, “I think we’re getting somewhere, Harley.”

Her thought just now. How was it possible?

“You don’t understand,” she muttered.

“So enlighten me.”

She drummed her cigarette-free fingers on her knee. “I wasn’t banished from my world, like you were, okay? I chose to leave. On a gut _feeling_.”

“So did I.”

“I know, I know, just… You had nothing to lose. I had everything.”

He gave her a mock-stern look.

“Everything,” she insisted, “only not what I wanted. But I don’t know what I want. I can have everything, but I don’t fucking want it. You see? I haven’t just visited one world. I’ve visited hundreds. And everywhere I go, it’s the same. Always, always the same. Boring. Stupid. Unfair. Scary as fuck. The wrong things rewarded. Strength is lauded, weakness abhorred. Everyone afraid of everyone else. Life balancing on the tip of a pin. But seeing it doesn’t help. I see it, but I can’t do anything. I’ve got this… this…” She gestured at her head. “Curse, gift. The gift of seeing, the curse of not acting. How can you ever act when you can see all ends? How can you ever judge? Dismiss?” Tossing the cigarette away, she burst out, “I understand why those people outside the hospital wanted to kill me, and they were right!”

This time it was her voice that reverberated against the stone buildings. Joker’s eyes were wide, attentive. Was he waiting for the defining word, the excuse he needed to take her up on her death wish?

If that’s what it was. She didn’t really want to die. She just didn’t want the life she had.

“In their heads, they’re right,” she muttered, hugging herself. “Because I represent the others. The higher-ups. I’m on fucking Wayne’s side.”

He swayed where he sat, and his fingers curled. Her heart made a giant beat – first a pause, and then a big thud like a tsunami in her chest. Her pulse rushed to keep up with the increased blood flow, and half of it exploded in her face.

“You see? I can understand it. But I can’t change it. I can’t change where I was born, or to whom. Believe me, if I could do _that_…” She grimaced. ”But I can’t. So how can I ever get inside _their _heads and change what’s there? Their reality, that they’ve lived with for twenty, thirty, forty, seventy years? Would I even have the right, when I can’t even change my own?”

“I’m not entirely sure I follow you.”

“I know. I can’t put it into words. Bottom line, this thing in my head… it’s unnatural. No one's supposed to know everything, to see everything, to _feel_…” She gasped. “Fuck. People need their blinders, you see? People need to lie to themselves, or they go crazy. They need their perspective limited and skewed, because if they knew, if they really knew… they wouldn’t be able to act on that knowledge. Like I’m unable to act.” She banged the ground with her fist. “Why didn’t I get their _fucking_ blinders?”

He looked at her with a strange expression on his face – almost awestruck. “You’re seeing the world for what it is. That frees you, can’t you see that?”

“It doesn’t free me, idiot. It shows me all the ways I’m wrong… Shit, I’m sorry, I mean I shouldn’t even be… Fuck this.”

Heart beating too fast, she got up and started walking away, towards the opening between the houses and the far-off glitter of water. Maybe that’s where her future lay? In the pitch-black waters of Gotham harbor?

But in seconds, hurrying feet caught up with her. She could sense him grinning beside her – happy to hold the ace? To have made her show all her cards?

“You know…” She whirled on him. “I do hate you. In another, realer universe, I do. In a world where I have standards, and values, and…” Her mouth went stiff with a strange kind of convulsion, trying to save her from what she was saying? “You’re insane. And I’m not. Not according to the fucking DSM. I’m just _choosing _to be. But _you_... you're the closest thing to realness I’ve ever known. All the people I like – and I’m using that term loosely, okay? – the people who are kind, hard-working, honest… they’re not real to me. They’re not. I look at them and I see talking heads. Nothing beneath the surface.”

She stopped. The darkness was thickening, the sky deepening into a beautiful turquoise, and she was talking herself into a corner, spilling the final secrets, giving him not just the key but the whole fucking bunch of them.

“I know the mechanisms behind this, _fuck_. I should know better. But nothing else is _real_. I mean I get it, the world has to run on rules and structure and ordinary fucking decency, but I search within myself and there’s nothing, just an actress prostituting herself to get a job she doesn’t want, to be liked by people she has no respect for. And yet I try to be like them, even though I don’t want to be, and the trying makes me fucking _crazy_. And here you are, and you’re real. I hate you and you’re awful and you’re insane, but everything you do makes sense to me. I’m scared of you and I want you out of my life, but now I have a fucking purpose. That’s why I’m here, to fucking–”

She broke off to laugh, and it felt as painful as Arthur’s laugh looked.

“_Understand_. Because in your case, if I understand, I’ll have _done_ something, and not just played around with factors and probabilities and theories. If I understand you, I’ll have paid for all my uselessness. I’ll have compensated for not doing anything with my life, for taking… perhaps not the easy road, but the one that was presented to me, always. I’ve climbed the ladder, but it was someone else who handed it to me and pointed to the wall. I never chose a single fucking thing in my life. Just walked through open doors. And even that felt too hard, because I _didn’t fucking want it_."

She paused: a chance for him to comment, but he didn't so she delivered the fucking punchline, or what served as one in a world where she had no place, whatever those fuckers said.

“You’re my mirror, Arthur. Isn’t that funny? Mirror in a funhouse, all distorted, but I see you and I _know_ you, and yet I have no idea what you’re going to do next. Kiss me, kill me? Laugh at me? Tell me my deepest secret? I see you like you see yourself, and I hate what I see and I want it. Now slap me and tell me to fuck off, because I'm not going to make more sense than this.”

For eons, all he did was look at her. White lashes swished in slow blinks while his dark-lit eyes probed every line in her face.

Then he said, “I wish I could fuck you.”

Oh for… _God_. She staggered back and leaned against the nearest wall, and he stepped up to her, close close _close_, their cloudy breaths mingling between them, and his hand brushed her thigh, traveled up to where the vacuum in her soul was physically manifest. Cupping her Venus mound through the fabric, he pressed upwards. Filling the void, making her feel in a way that couldn’t be explained away. She wanted to say _harder_, but she didn’t have to. This time it wasn’t unsatisfactory. It was all she wanted, and yet he wasn’t even actually in her. He just pushed all the right buttons with almost-angry fingers, holding her eyes captive as if to see it all unfurl inside her. See the way his touch loosened all the knots and burst all the bubbles. He touched her like she touched herself, without mercy.

“Please…” she whispered, and he withdrew for a moment to find his way down her pantyhose. Tight, so tight he almost didn’t reach, but then his fingers were in her pleats, and goddammit she didn’t care about anything. So she had no one, nothing. At least she had this. He curled like warm claws inside her, pushed once, then twice, then deeper and how the fuck was this even physically possible, his fingers still bent so that his knuckles pressed against the back where no one had ever known to touch her. All wrong according to the manual, but so right in this one singular case, an exception to the rule, a sweet twisted longing that fulfilled itself _finally_.

If Wayne was anywhere close to them, her cry would lead him to them. Images tumbled through her mind as those perfect fingers squeezed the final drops out of her: the white room, the subway, her office, her flat, like the reel of life rattling past when you died. And him, and him, and him. Backed by fire, by stone, by the night sky. She was lost, and she was found, and this was something she could pay for with almost anything.

For the longest time she just breathed. What had just happened? Was this some kind of sealing, or was it a farewell? She kept her eyes closed and breathed through parted lips until something warm touched them briefly, his mouth, oh God… She looked, and he was frowning, confused? About to leave?

“You know,” he said hesitantly. “That thing with Wayne just now… I know I wasn’t at my best.”

She collapsed in weary giggles. It really was time to get some fucking sleep. “You mean you didn’t get to choreograph the whole thing?”

He gingerly pulled out of her, drew his hand up the front of her pantyhose the same way he’d come. “It didn’t go the way it was supposed to.”

Harley smiled. “Well, that’s better for me. More spontaneous.”

“Why, you took down field notes?” he sneered, for all the world like they hadn’t just been in the throes of her coming.

She heaved a sigh and ran a hand through her hair. “I didn’t need to.”

“You’re not as smart as you think, Harley.”

“And yet you want me to be your chronicler.”

The world held its breath. It was make or break: tossed out there, a question in the form of a statement, a plea uttered flippantly. Did he realize? Did he know that everything hinged on the next thing out of his mouth? That it was him or Gotham harbor?

“I never thought I’d have someone hanging off my fucking gun arm.”

She let out a shaky breath. He sounded annoyed, but who the fuck wasn't? She hadn't planned for this to happen either, now had she? “I’ll record your genius for posterity,” she said sweetly.

His nose jerked, once. “Give me something useful. _Feedback_. Tell me what I can improve on.”

She grinned. “Yeah, I can just imagine you taking feedback well.”

His eyes narrowed. “You know what, I hate you too. So put that in your fucking book.”

Despite herself, she laughed. “I will. I’ll analyze you to pieces, you son of a bitch.”

“Analyze, pfft. Until you have my sickness, you can’t have my fun.” 

Bringing his fingers up to his nose, he smelled them. She didn’t even have the energy to blush about it, because in the end, what was there to blush about? So he turned her on. On like a fucking live wire close to water. Besides, this was it, wasn't it? She was home and dry? As dry as you could be with a fucking maniac.

Above them in the sky, something was flickering – something bright. They both looked up, and there was a searchlight flashing, faltering. It looked like a test of some kind, like some dusted-off machine pulled out of a cellar and switched on to see if it still worked. It fluttered on and off like a camera obscura, and something Rorschach-like blotted the perfect yellow circle, made it look like a bird was beating its wings up there. Or maybe something more sinister – something with sharp talons and devil horns?

Harley squinted. “What do you think it means?”

Joker stared up at it, arm absently snaking around her waist, a travesty of chivalry. “I don’t know.”

She snorted. “How does _that_ feel?”

His arm clutched her closer as the searchlight died, stars emerging in its place. After a minute or two she chanced a feather-light, “So is this a fair deal, then? You fuck my brains out while I write your epitaph and comfort you when you laugh.”

Beneath smudged and runny makeup, his eyebrow came up in a sarcastic curve. “Comfort?”

She shrugged. “I told you a funny story, didn’t I?”

His eyes turned shadowy, a gravestone green to tease her. Lips quirking red in a joke for nobody else to get, his voice was a velvet slither. "You keep doing that, my bright Scheherazade."


End file.
